Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For subsequent entries, see index.
We’ve covered the cosmological argument for god and the argument from evil or indifference against god (which Marshall just concluded with his final answer on that), and now are moving on to his “Moral Argument” for the existence of God. Here is Marshall’s elaboration of it.
That the Evidence Points to God (X)
by Wallace Marshall, Ph.D.
My second argument for theism is the Moral Argument, which runs as follows:
- If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- Objective moral values and duties exist.
- Therefore, God exists.
To head off some common misunderstandings, note that the argument doesn’t claim that God needs to inform us, say in a revelation of some kind, about what’s right and wrong. Nor is it claiming that people need to believe in God in order to behave ethically. Rather, it’s about moral ontology: what morality is, and what seems necessary to ground it. Finally, note that each of the premises finds support among atheists.
Philosophers who analyze our moral experience have discovered that moral language and its connotations are quite distinctive. It’s markedly different from how we talk about things like etiquette, convention, taste, preferences or aesthetics. As John Mackie put it in his classic 1977 book, Ethics, moral experience seems to contain “qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” [1]
Philosophers of morality spend a lot of time analyzing how people use moral words—“ought,” “duty,” “rights,” “justice,” etc. What ideas or beliefs are implied by the way people use these terms? What sentiments do people experience when they’re using them? If a proposed theory doesn’t fit well with the way people use and experience moral language, then the theory is likely to be rejected. Philosophers will say, “Well if that’s how your theory is defining moral terms, then you’re not really talking about morality. You’re using the same words but you’re talking about something else.” Such theories “cease to participate competently” in moral discourse, and are therefore ruled out. They may be good theories of something else, but they’re not satisfactory theories of morality.
Let me point out three significant features that emerge from an analysis of moral experience:
- “Oughtness.” When we say that an action is morally wrong, we mean that the person to whom we are speaking is prohibited from doing it, regardless of whatever his personal interests, desires and projects might be. Of course we don’t always use the word “ought” in this moral sense. Often we’re just using a consequential ought (“You ought to leave now if you want to get home before dark”). Here there’s nothing moral: it’s simply a piece of advice: If you want X, you should do Y, because Y is the most likely way of getting X. The moral ought implies obligation; the consequential ought doesn’t.
- Personal responsibility and the consequent legitimacy of praise and blame, and of moral indignation against someone who has committed a terrible evil.
- The universality of at least some moral standards: that some things, or at least one thing—the paradigmatic “torturing a little child for fun”—are morally evil for every human being in every context throughout history.
I will summarize those three beliefs with the short statement of Premise 2, “Objective moral values and duties exist,” where “objective” means, “something that would be wrong even if everyone on the planet thought it was okay.”
The three moral convictions listed above would seem to easily qualify for what philosophers call “properly basic” beliefs, that is, beliefs that are formed naturally in a normal cognitive state, and that we should accordingly maintain in the absence of some “defeater.”
Philosophers known as “moral-error theorists” recognize that almost everyone has these moral beliefs, but they think the beliefs are mistaken. As atheist Richard Joyce, one of the most prominent moral philosophers in the English-speaking world laments, the universe “just doesn’t contain the requisite properties (goodness, wrongness, etc.) necessary to render any of [our moral judgments] true.” [2]
Premise 1, then, is the claim that atheism, if true, constitutes a defeater for Premise 2. If God doesn’t exist, our moral convictions are simply then the biological and sociological spinoff of an evolutionary process whose only aims are survival and reproduction, and whose ultimate ground is simply matter and energy, which of course are impersonal and morally indifferent. Humans have the moral convictions they do because at some point in our evolutionary history they were probably useful to survival and reproduction. [3] They may still be, or they may no longer be, but the only “ought” they would qualify for would be the consequential ought, namely: “If you want your species to continue to survive and grow, you may want to continue behaving in these ways, unless it’s seems pretty clear to you that some of them have outlived their evolutionary usefulness.”
Granted, on atheism, we might still develop an objective science of how to attain various societal conditions that a wide majority of people find to be conducive to their happiness; say, the flourishing of all humans or sentient creatures, or a society people would hypothetically “vote for” if they didn’t know in advance where they would end up being placed (Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance”).
But such systems will be conditional on the agreement of the players who have signed up for the game, so to speak. They have no moral basis for obligating or condemning aberrant individuals or groups who choose to play a different game —thieves and gang members, serial killers, pedophiles and sadists; or a group like the Nazis that rejects the extensive model of human/sentient flourishing in favor of an intensive model that favors the flourishing of the highest types. Of course there would still be a pragmatic reason for coercing conformity from such people, but it wouldn’t be a moral reason.
Dr. Carrier may have another naturalistic moral philosophy to present, of course, which I’ll be happy to hear and comment on.
If God does exist, however (not “gods,” which if necessary I will show cannot do the job), then the ultimate foundation of existence is personal and moral. This wouldn’t solve all our ethical problems, of course, but it would (1) give us confidence that our fundamental moral convictions are not illusory but are rooted in the framework of a moral universe; and (2) provide a moral basis for obligating conformity (the moral “ought”).
Plato’s “Euthyphro Dilemma” is the most common objection to grounding morality in God, but I think it is easily answered, as I will show if Dr. Carrier wishes to bring it forward.
What about “biting the bullet” and rejecting both God and objective morality together? Here I think atheist philosopher Louise Antony has a compelling reply: “Any argument for moral scepticism will be based upon premisses which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.” [4]
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Such is Dr. Marshall’s expansion on the Moral Argument for God.
Continue on to my reply.
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[1] J.W. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1977), 48.
[2] Richard Joyce, “Moral Fictionalism” in Philosophy Now, Sep/Oct 2014. Accessed 11/18/2014 (a large number of Joyce’s articles can be found here). For similar perspectives from atheists and agnostics, see Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), 17. 95. 145; Joel Marks, “Confessions of an Ex-Moralist”, New York Times Online, 21 August 2011; Steven Pinker, “The Moral Instinct”, New York Times, 13 January 2008; “The Simple Answer: Nick Pollard Talks to Richard Dawkins”, The Third Way, vol. 18, no. 3 (April 1995): 19. William Provine, “Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy”, Debate with Phillip E. Johnson at Stanford University, 30 April 1994; Bertrand Russell, Letter to The Observer, 8 October 1957, in Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell Volume 29: Détente or Destruction, 1955-1957, ed. Andrew G. Bone (New York: Routledge, 2005), 99 (“I find my own views [that there is no objective morality] argumentatively irrefutable, but nevertheless incredible. I do not know the solution.”); and Kai Nielsen’s much-discussed essay, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 90 (“We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me…. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”).
[3] For a discussion of the problem posed to objective moral values and duties by an atheistic evolutionary framework, see Michael Ruse, “Is Rape Wrong on Andromeda?” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 209-44.
[4] Louse Antony, “Is God Necessary for Morality?” 2008 debate with William Lane Craig at UMass Amherst.
As a christian followr uv jesus/yahweh, I OUGHT t kill/slaughter
‘the men, the wimin, the childrin and the babies being brest fed’ 1 samuel 3.15 etc
els, I’m immoral if I difend the wimin and babies. right?
torturing babies…Why du christians always append ‘for fun’ when that particular ixampl is addust?
Is torturing babies (not fr fun) OK?
The bibl’s god is difrunt tu the god in the argumunt.
This type is very commun is islamic thinking –
Allah knows and u du not –
Fiting is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you; but it may happen that ye hate a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that ye love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knoweth, ye know not. Quran 2.216
hence that’s why abraham and jefthah OUGHT t kill their sun / daughtr cus that’s the moral thing t du.
In some exejeses isaac dus in fact die bit is brought back t life.
And u ought t smack the wud be recalcitrunt wife (4.34); amputate a thief’s hand; stone/flog the fornicator/adulterer etc. Cuz that is the moral law as ordain’d by god.
Or at least was so ordained, which raises the question of whether God keeps changing what’s moral, which challenges the Christian’s notion of what “objective morals” are, or that wasn’t God (and the commandments in the OT were in fact immoral, invented by immoral humans who lied when attributing them to God; and if the OT is all a lie, the NT is as well, as it references and endorses it). These are challenging problems for anyone who can’t agree this was all made up and never reflected any divine wisdom anyway.
I understand many Americans are in favor of infant circumcision, which is effectively torture in all but intent.
Alif, if you was God then it would be ok for you to judge societies that became vile. But you are not God so your efforts ought to be in persuading people to turn from vile practices. Also, if you have a problem with the OT then you need to ditch the Quran since it is rooted in Abraham and the OT.
Torturing babies just for fun is simply an example of something that everyone knows and agrees is wrong. The theist can point to a ground/basis for calling it objectively wrong. Everything the atheist posit is relative. Including evolution. Moral values and duties, if evolution is true, can produce any broad set of moral standards. Look at the different moral value sets of the different countries for just one example. It’s rooted in the convenience of those in power or popular vote of the times. You can personally disagree with what I just now said but then the moral values would then be “relative” to YOUR opinion. Notice on atheism moral values change with time and opinion thus now making it relative and nothing more. The point of the premises is simply to show that if you know deep in your being that some things are”actually” wrong irregardless of time and opinion then there must be some transcending standard for those moral values and duties. If we agree the premises are true then we recognize this as “evidence” for theism/God. If the atheist insists there is still no evidence for God then their insistence is their relative opinion.
The truth of course, as we’ve already hashed out several times in this debate, no one actually has any consistently reliable intuition (any “knowing deep in your being”) about what’s moral. Ergo that premise is false.
If they did, the Bible would condemn not endorse slavery, and embrace alternative sexuality and not command the murder of gay people, and promote freedom of speech and religion not have God command the mass execution of anyone exercising those rights. Likewise we’d have the correct moral opinions voiced by at least someone all over the world at all times in history. We don’t. To the contrary, in every era and culture and subculture, what people’s “intuition” and “gut” tells them is moral, is wildly divergent. Thus demonstrating there is no access to moral truth by any such means. And thus no “external transmitter” of consistent information regarding it, much less any reliable receiver of said transmission.
Moral progress had to be worked out, through reason and observation, trial and error, just like agriculture, medicine, and political systems. Generally in fact against prevailing intuitions.
william, firstly – on being god, – I don’t understand how sin, immorality etc can possibly arise where is a supremely good god. only Good arises from a Good god. From good only good comes. ex bono, bonum fit (!). it is impossibl for sin t arise in any wurld- free will or not creatid by a good god eg sin cannot arise in the post jujmunt hevnly population] but the bibl nevr ixplains the actual orijin of sin.
Apparuntly Jesus tolerates sin in his gardun from the ‘cunning’ snake but as soon as human beings eat’v the tree jesus kicks us out.
Now, if I were jesus, I should deracinate the tree and imbrace adam n eve – I luv pepl mor than trees 😉
Remembr ‘forgiv 70 x 7’, ‘luv ur enumies’ etc.
I’m sorry but the caractr’v jesus in the NT is
an arrant hypocrit. hav u seen him as a cosmic mujahid/jihadē in the apocalyps book?!
[A posthumus and heartfelt apology and full pardun to professor John Marco Allegro [RIP, lest we forget].
His ‘The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross’ shud be requird mandatry reading in evry seminry!]
Not t wurry I’v ditcht the quran, bibls etc a long time ago. I may play the devil’s advukut here and there.
Again, why add ‘for fun’ – why not just say ‘torturing babies is bad. full stop’. Ar u afraid because torturing babies is summat jesus did eg making mums and dads eat their own childrin – jer 19. 9 – the verb is in the causativ I [jesus/yahweh etc] will cause them t eat their own childrin in the famin.
‘irregardless’ – yuck!
‘trees exist’ – is that an unobjectiv my opinion only non transending statement?
Alif, you gave me a lot to answer. If I answer some of your questions will you try to figure out the rest with rational thought and reflection?
Being a follower of God means follow His directives–“thou shalt not kill”. Governments execute wicked people, and so can God, though we as individuals don’t. Governments also direct people to take up arms to kill at times such as the wicked Nazi Germany and so can God.
I could instead say “torturing babies for the sake of curiosity” instead of “for fun”. I could leave out the “for fun”. What difference would it make. It’s objectively wrong and if you can’t sense that in your inner most being I’d say you need help.
You claim you can’t understand how there can be sin if God is good or only capable of creating good. I have reasons to conclude God can do more. God should be able to create people that can choose to depart from the good. That is what sin and evil is, choosing to reject the good. God seems to want to relate to people that chose to reject that departure from good. This would multiply the value of relationships between people and God.This makes God even more good than your previous presumptions of Him.
You note Jer 19:9 and suggest this as though God is forcing the people to eat their children. Remember, you are reading the language of apocalyptic imagery and prophecy. You ignore vs 4-5 just before vs 9 showing the people were already burning their children as burnt offerings to Baal. An obviously made up God. When God brings judgement on them they would respond as wickedly as eating their own children, their own choosing not actually directed by God. I’ll stop for now.
I used to believe and say things similar to these:
In fact I was in the middle of a rampage (that probably lasted for days) debunking all contrary views I could find on the internet (including the views of fellow atheists) when I first read Richard Carrier’s views on the subject. Until then I hadn’t read much of anything he said, because I thought he mostly wrote about obscure history stuff I didn’t really understand, and didn’t know if I could trust.
But I went to his article like “fine, I might as well check this out too”. What I found (especially in the comment section, where he replied to people) was that he was able to convincingly answer what no one else I had seen had been able to. Pretty soon I could anticipate how he would respond to objections before I even read his replies to them. Still, at first I wasn’t sure his proposal should be called “morality”. But I soon came to see that it was indeed morality, and he was right.
It was one of those few most significant intellectual shifts in my life. Needless to say I’ve been a fan ever since.
In the second sentence of the fourth paragraph after #4, “than” should be deleted or revised to “then.” The last half of the same sentence may commit the fallacy of composition, ignoring the possibility of moral supervenience.
If you mean the sentence “If God doesn’t exist, our moral convictions are simply then the biological and sociological spinoff of an evolutionary process whose only aims are survival and reproduction, and whose ultimate ground is simply matter and energy, which of course are impersonal and morally indifferent,” I fixed the grammar; and you are right about the logic.
It’s what I call a modo hoc fallacy (“only this” or “just this”), cf. Sense and Goodness without God pp. 130-31.
It’s just like “my automobile is just matter and energy, and matter and energy can’t drive me to the grocery store, therefore my car isn’t a vehicle” or “democracy is just matter and energy, and so is autocracy, therefore there is no difference between democracy and autocracy” or “computers are just matter and energy, so there is no difference between a Mac and a PC” and so on.
There’s more to Marshall’s argument than just that misstep; but it’s a common misstep. Social facts are emergent properties of particular arrangements of things; they don’t cease to distinctly exist simply because they all reduce to matter and energy. Moral facts are social facts; they are facts about social systems. They thus reside in the arrangement of social systems; not in the atoms and photons that are arranged that way.
Could you restate Marshall’s misstep. I tried really hard to make the connection to your car and PC with matter and energy example and can’t see the relevance to the premises or something he said. Thanks
Moral facts are facts about organized systems. Moral facts do not exist in a pile of space dust. But organize that pile of space dust into a society of conscious agents interacting with each other, and moral facts exist in that arrangement.
Marshall is acting like because the “society of conscious agents interacting with each other” is reductively identical to the space dust that formed it, that therefore there can be no true facts about that social system that aren’t also true of the space dust. That’s false. Saying “it’s all just atoms really” does not get you to “therefore cars and trees don’t exist” or “there is no difference between a car and a tree,” and for exactly the same reason, saying “it’s all just atoms really” does not get you to “therefore moral facts don’t exist” or “there is no difference between a moral society and an immoral one.”
It also doesn’t matter, I should add, what process produced those social facts (e.g. selection for “survival and reproduction”), since most of what evolution generates is a byproduct of survival aims, not a direct aid to them.
We have countless examples of things that were not “selected for” but were the inevitable end result of what was selected for. For example, our capacities of intellection were not selected for their ability to land men on the moon or construct complex republics; but a space program and a republic are things such capacities can inevitably produce once selected for, even despite having been selected for because of other outcomes such an intellection generated (like planning, tool-making, and diplomacy).
And indeed, space programs and republics actually turn out to be very conductive to survival (of a species); but that’s still not why our brains evolved as they did. Likewise an ability to discern and act on moral facts also turns out to be very conducive to survival (of a species); but indeed unlike space programs and republics, our brains actually have undergone selection pressure directly toward the capacity to discern moral facts. We can see proto-moralities in other social animals for example. And we have a pretty good account now of the ad hoc neural evolutiuon of moral perception (including the ways that it errs or falls short of a perfectly accurate perception capacity, just as with our other sensory capacities, especially those most recently evolved).
It seems that those who are objecting to Dr. Marshall’s argument are objecting to premise 1. Dr. Carrier objects that Dr. Marshall is acting like “a society of conscious agents interacting with each other is reductively identical to space dust…” and ultimately that is not true. He also responds that moral facts “exist in that arrangement.” I believe Dr. Carrier has misunderstood Dr. Marshall. They are completely in agreement that we are not reducible to space dust and that moral facts do exist in that arrangement. That is not the argument. The question is WHY is that true? What grounds those intuitions and perceptions?
If it’s from the group of people in that organized society, then the moral values are subjective, not objective. Why think, given atheism, there are any moral facts that are objective? Where do they come from? Also, why consider the “safety” or “flourishing” of human beings as being objectively valuable over any other form of life form if atheism is true? What gives us that inherent value? Do we get that value because we are rational? Why value rationality over size or color or any other property? There doesn’t seem to be any grounding for the objective moral values that Dr. Carrier has affirmed “exist in that arrangement.”
The above paragraph is about moral values, but with moral duties its even more difficult to see why we ought to do one thing over another. Who or what imposes objective duties on us?
If as Dr. Carrier says above our morals are ad hoc due to the neural evolution of moral perception, then why ought we to obey those impulses? If they are ad hoc, we still have no grounding for them. And if they come to us in that manner, that is definitively subjective not objective. Perhaps he was addressing where moral values and duties come from, but it does not show that they are objective. And again Dr. Marshall’s argument is not how we come to know those values, the argument is about what grounds them as objectively true and real.
That isn’t Dr. Marshall’s argument. Because then he’d be conceding you don’t need God for moral facts; all systems entail moral facts, regardless of how they came about. So if that’s his argument, it’s not a moral argument, but just a garden variety design argument.
And facts that obtain regardless of what you believe they are by definition not subjective. They are by definition objective. You are confusing different levels of analysis. See my reply here and in particular my article Objective Moral Facts.
No person impressed moral duties on us. Reality does. You either act a certain way and thus undermine your satisfaction with yourself and life, or you act another way and optimize them. Reality (not any person) dictates which behaviors have which outcomes. That’s what it means to say systems entail moral facts. That we all by definition would rather be more rather than less satisfied with ourselves and life is why we ought to obey propositions that increase rather than decrease the odds of being more so.
Dr. Marshall wrote:
“If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.”
Response: The concern about the well being of one’s self and others is at the root of morality (why we even care about it). From that standpoint it is easy to see how man (the civilization of man) could’ve evolved to the point to where he would be concerned about morality, much like it makes sense that he would come to be concerned about safety.
It would be silly to argue that if not for God man would never have come to be concerned about safety. It is just as silly to make that same argument about morality.
X’s objectivity per se dusn’t assure god eg
i) if jesus dusn’t exist, trees and plants don’t objectivly exist.
trees and plants du exist objectivly
therefor jesus exists.
the first premis seems begging the q – as it seems in Dr Marshal’s first premis.
we perceiv morality supervening on acts – is that the god proof?
If we agree that rape is rong – and not just rong but immoral – I can’t see nor mesure objectivly ie how a penile molecule is anti-thetical to a vajinal molecule in such a case. so it’s not the act per se but whot we say about it.
Adam n Eve’s childrin must’v had incestuus sex – which is moral. Recently a bunch of muhummuduns went ape because Lawrence Krauss n uthr atheists sed incest isn’t rong morally or why is cannibalism onjectivly rong?
I think you missed the point Marshall made that you don’t need to believe in God to recognize when something is moral or immoral. I think he’d say the same thing about safety. The point is the grounding for those moral values can only be “objective” (vs relative) if God exists. The theists freely admit (or at least should) that atheists have “relative” moral values and duties. But that means if you think there exists a realm of “objective” moral values then this would be evidence for a transcending standard which the theist call God.
This calls attention to a semantic error: “relative” is not the opposite of “objective.” Moral relativism is actually a subset of moral realism; moral values can be as objectively true in moral relativism as velocity is in Relativity.
See my article “Objective Moral Facts.”
Thank you Dr. Carrier for providing the link to your article on Objective Moral Facts. I don’t believe the article ultimately addresses the grounding of objective moral values and duties. I will give some of my reasons for saying this.
To be clear, when I say that there is an objective moral value I am saying there is something outside of my own personal preference or opinion that is good or bad. It is good or bad regardless of how I feel about that particular issue. It is also good or bad regardless of how I come to know it is good or bad. When I say there is an objective moral duty, I am saying that someone ought to act a particular way in a given situation because it is right or they ought not to act in a particular way because it is wrong. I am saying that someone ought to do that despite my preference for how they would act, or despite their own preference for how they would act. That is what I mean by objective moral values and duties. Note this has nothing to do with multiple people agreeing on something. Multiple people could be wrong. This has been the case with many acts in history. Slave trading and the extermination of Jews during World War II would be two examples.
I agree with you that our experience of moral values and duties is subjective (that is an epistemological notion). I also agree that it is objectively true that we have subjective experiences. Where I disagree is that you reduce our moral values to each individual’s brain structure. “What you value is reducible to a physical structure in your brain, such that if you changed that structure, you would change what you value, and no changes in what you value are possible without corresponding changes to your brain’s structure.” If our values come from each individual’s brain structure they are not objective in any way. How could my own brain structure produce a morally binding feature for all people? It seems here you don’t believe anything is objectively morally binding.
However, then you consistently attempt to communicate objective moral values and duties throughout the article. For example when you say that someone “ought” to abandon self-defeating behaviors. You have just imposed an objective duty onto that person. Namely, that person should not act with self-defeating behaviors. Under your view, I can’t see why they shouldn’t. If their brain structure produces a value of self-defeating behavior, then they should follow it. But if they follow it, they violate your imposed objective moral duty.
Or for example, is it bad to create a nation in which all children are indoctrinated with racist values? I would assume you would say that is not good under any circumstances or for any societies or individuals. My point is, I think you want to affirm objective values, but are lacking the metaphysical resources to do so because you have reduced values to the subjectivity of our brain structure.
Finally, in your second paragraph in So Get to the Actual Point Instead you say, “Some people want moral facts to exist outside of and apart from human beings.” Then you proceed to compare that belief to astrology and state “The world doesn’t work that way and never has. All the evidence for thousands of years of history confirms the fact. Moral facts are facts about human beings. They therefore cannot, even in principle, exist outside of and apart from human beings.” I think that your assertion here is far from obvious. You state this as if there were overwhelming agreement when there doesn’t seem to be. Even atheist philosophers will affirm things like Moral Platonism which would run contrary to your statement above. I believe Dr. Marshall has given a good argument for the existence of God, an entity that would ground objective moral values and duties.
Note there is a crucial difference between what your preference or opinion is, and what it would be if you arrived at it without fallacy and on a basis of correct and relevant facts. All moral disputes hinge on correcting putative ignorance (true facts the person should be basing their desires on, or false facts they should not be) or error (reasoning fallaciously from the facts agreed to be true). That is one of many ways we know moral truth consists in what a fully informed and rational person would conclude was best.
Thus, indeed, what is best will be “good or bad regardless of how [you] feel about that particular issue,” because your feelings can be mistaken (based on a false understanding or fallacious inference).
Thus what I am describing to you are objective moral facts, even by your own definition here.
Of course they are.
Even in the trivial sense: Brains are objective physical facts. And the values physically encoded in them are objective social and psychological facts, existing in one-to-one correspondence to the physical facts encoding them. For instance, you can be wrong about what they are, or what they entail.
But more importantly in the substantive sense: Whether encoding in your brain a given value will maximize your satisfaction with yourself and your life, without recourse to any false belief or logical error, is a function of the whole physical and social system you are in.
For instance, what death or injury do, partly determines when and whether killing or injuring is bad or good, and what the social consequences of iterating a particular behavior will actually do (such as authorizing revenge killing rather than reserving killing for a regulated legal system: the relative effects of either on you and those you care about) is an objective fact you cannot wish away by merely “disbelieving” it or believing something different. No amount of being “certain in your heart” that an open-revenge system would be “better” for you will make it so. Reality does not obey your beliefs. It does what it does. You can either acknowledge it or not. That’s what makes moral facts objective: the total reality that encodes them. Not your mere wishes or desires or beliefs at any given time.
That isn’t what I argued. Good and bad values are physically encoded in brains. You are confusing the mere fact that this is so, with how we tell those two encoded values apart. Rationally informed persons will endeavor to encode good values into their brain and overwrite bad values out of their brain.
In other words, I nowhere argue we are all just born with correct values encoded in our brains. To the contrary I explicitly argue we aren’t, and thus have to install a massive human-invented software-patch to correct for the faulty values systems were are born with or develop in childhood willy nilly. This requires cognitive effort and habituation. And is aided by a culture that pre-installs in us a value system already close to best (or closer than is available any other way). Which is the reason struggling over control of this cultural “software suite” is so important.
For example, why is racism wrong? Because it is destructive of the potentials for personal satisfaction in everyone in the system governed by such a bad value. Either directly (empathy and conscience tortures those who know it’s a lie and a cause of widespread harm upon the innocent, in contravention of the person it would satisfy them more to be) or indirectly (by requiring the subject pollute their mind with a raft of false beliefs and fallacious inference making that cripples one’s access to reality).
In short, “racism is good for us” can only be maintained on a collection of false premises; and no moral system built from false premises can be true. So if what you want to know is what is morally true, you have to ask what is physically true: about people and social systems, about actual (not fake) differences between races, about the actual (not “believed”) effects on people of racism (even the racists), and so on.
This would even be a good exercise to try: try and explain why God would deem racism bad. It can’t just be an arbitrary coin-flip of whatever God we happened to pull out of the metaphysical hat. There has to be a reason that racism is worse than racial equality (probably several). Otherwise “racism is worse than racial equality” is a false statement, because it is based on nothing (there is nothing being measured that can be called worse or better). Once you succeed at really getting to why racism is bad, you’ll start to see that what you’ve just listed are a bunch of physical facts about people and the causal consequences of their social interactions.
Because that’s what it is. No God needed. Likewise if you try the same analysis for “why should we care about things being worse?” or anything else you are concerned about. Either you can give reasons. Or you can’t. And when you do give reasons, they will be true whether God exists or not. And that’s why God is not necessary for moral truth.
A claim for which they present exactly zero evidence. Just like astrologers. What there is no evidence to believe, cannot be affirmed. Consequently no argument for God can build on a premise there is no evidence for.
It’s worse of course, as I show there is even evidence against the existence of such things as Platonic Objects, but that’s a metaphysical digression; if it interests you, much of my book Sense and Goodness without God is about it. But even if you haven’t realize that yet, you still must recognize there is zero evidence for a premise of “values that exist outside minds.” Ergo no argument can proceed from such a premise.
I was careful not to make that assumption. And I know it’s a commun christian polemical trope.
But again I don’t see how you get to god with objectivity.
Why should I need t ‘ground’ in jesus the objectivity of trees and plants or the functions of my liver or my kidneys or the properties of fire or water?
What is this ‘relm’ u speak ov that I must ‘ground’ the objectiv functions of my skin or a moral framewurk?
Positing such a ‘relm’ seems unbelievabl codswollup.
Sure a theist can claim – till the cows come home = that the objectiv existence of a blade ov grass is just as much evidence as objectiv morality. But it remains a claim nun – the – less.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he speaks of the law being ritn on our hearts. As a fulfilmunt ov Jeremy 31.33. Seems t me christians distort this verse to make it say ‘moral’ law being ritn on our hearts. He’s surely tawking about the mosaic law – which includs, for exampl the rapist being obligated t marry his rape victim etc Deut 22:23-29.
[Reminds me ov the marital law in the Share’ah in muhummudunism wher marriage is a contract and form of slavery ie the husband has got usufruct / quasi ownership of the woman’s pudenda as an exchange for the dot/’dower. Since he can take what ‘belongs’ to him hence there can be no rape in a muhummudun marriage. See Ali, Kecia – Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam, Harvard Uni Press, 2010].
Alif, listing trees, plants and liver etc and wondering about their objectivity doesn’t apply to what we’re discussing. Being aware (grounding) of the objectivity of physical objects doesn’t have moral dimension and isn’t a point of contention between theists and atheists.
Then you try to show Deuteronomy passages to make your case. Are you just repeating what someone told you? Look for yourself. Deut 22:23-24 is talking about consenting participants then vs 25-27 talks about rape and the man is rightfully put to death. Then vs 28-29 is speaking of consentual sex again but the violation mentioned there is about “premarital” sex and not rape. Rape is not condoned or endorsed. It makes no sense to say “thou shalt not commit adultry” and then allow the man to get away with rape.
I couldn’t make out the word “usufruct”. Also, earlier in other posts you used the word “summat” (more than once) and I couldn’t figure that out either. When I write to my friends in Greek I have to check my spelling quite a bit but I try hard to improve.
Firstly, isn’t that quote from John Mackie a straight quote mine? The fuller quote is “If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.” Mackie is literally saying that OBJECTIVE value (not moral experience in general) is the thing that is strange and different. The fuller quote seems to directly contradict Dr. Marshall’s premises.
I personally accept the existence of objective morality, but disagree with Dr. Marshall’s justifications. Firstly, he doesn’t define morality but then says that anyone who doesn’t agree with him isn’t really talking about morality. And 2 of his 3 significant features aren’t necessary. Moral oughts need not be different than consequential oughts (social systems naturally produce practical reasons to be moral). It’s not that any moral standard needs to be universal, only that social interactions have consistent real-world consequences over time (if interactions changed or had different effects, morals would change too).
And indeed, the rest of Dr. Marshall’s argument then hinges on a distinct difference between moral (at this point only really defined as not being consequential) reasons and pragmatic reasons. I hope Dr. Marshall digs into that distinction more going forward, as I think that’s the thing that will make or break his argument.
I’m genuinely curious what your response is to the Euthyphro Dilemma; if Carrier decides not to pursue this line, I hope you will visit it nonetheless.
If Dr Marshall can’t find the time then I’ll show how it’s actually (or should be) a trilemma. Atheist debators know this but usually won’t bring this up with their followers.
It seems Dr Carrier has avoided this in his 10th reply, so knock yourself out.
I don’t believe Dr Marshall intended to avoid responding to this. I just know how busy he is.
I’ll lay it out briefly for those unaware of the argument.
1. Is the “good and just” good and just because God wills it (making it arbitrary and objectional) or
2. Does God will it (point to it) because it IS good and just (as though it was an already existing something that He points to making it exist externally in spite of whether or not He existed making it a 2nd problem).
The Christian theist view is that the “good and just” stems or flows necessarily from His nature. Not an arbitrary thought He dreamed up to impose on others nor an external something that He points to then commands it.
Originally Socrates asked this of Euthyphro but spoke of the gods (plural) which would imply reasonable objections.
The Christian theist adopt this view from what they conclude is biblical authority. The word δικαιοσύνη (translated righteousness) is attributed to God all throughout both old and new Testament and this word encompasses goodness and justice.
From this we get the onslaught of questions or objections. If I didn’t think the responses to the questions and objections were sufficient I’d reject that 3rd horn. I’ve heard a good number but I’m open to hearing a new one.
Thanks for this. I didn’t expect Dr Marshall to respond, so I appreciate your time.
After I wrote my last post, I decided I may as well google “Euthyphro Trilemma”, and sure enough I came upon a response to the argument as you’ve formulated it above. I thought I’d wait for you to respond in case you had some other argument in mind. It’s by Dr Gerrit Merriam, a professional philosopher who I have a lot of time for (he goes by the moniker “SisyphusRedeemed” on Youtube).
This response has been swallowed a couple of times, potentially due to the links I attempted to include, so please do look him up (I believe his video was from 2011). The short of it is that the third horn collapses back into the original dilemma; the exact same problem of will vs nature emerges on the third horn, so the problem is not solved. Dr Merriam extends this to a general case against splitting the horns.
Thanks for the SisyphrusRedeemed response to the Euthyphro trilemma you suggested to check out. I actually watched it several times taking notes so that I wouldn’t make the mistake of misunderstanding his points.
He asserts that there is a control dilemma, does God (a) control His nature which makes His control arbitrary or (b) does the nature control Him which entails the nature exists external to Him and He chooses to embrace THAT nature and says that something external is dictating/controlling His nature. He then says this collapses the trilemma back into the dilemma which is clearly false. All he is doing is restating the dilemma, sidestepping the third horn, implying an eternal regress problem (which I honestly tried to see a connection to but I can’t), making a comparison to a yardstick to which a controlling will is not an issue then goes off on an animated tirade which neither compels nor persuades. He’s inserting the word “control” and trying to build a separate dilemma. But “control” is implicit in the original dilemma, His will which he commands/”controls”or His choice/”control” which “controls” Him.
Thinking about it, the Euthyphro question could be posed to the atheist. Is the atheist arbitrary in deciding the good or is there an external good that he can look to and embrace? (Hmm… God maybe?) Just an interesting thought to toss out there.
Dr. Marshall fails to demonstrate that premise 1 is true. His argument for premise 1 involves quoting a few atheist philosophers. He does not show that their arguments are sound, nor does he present evidence that their conclusions represent a consensus. He has cherry-picked those quotations and suppressed evidence of opposite conclusions by other atheist philosophers.
The first sentence of the third paragraph from the end asserts, “If God does exist,…then the ultimate foundation of existence is personal and moral,” presumably because Dr. Marshall defines God as personal and moral. But he has not shown such a God exists. “[T]he ultimate foundation of existence” is a very vague metaphor. He should write what he literally means, if he wishes to argue for a conclusion. What he provides may commit the fallacy of amazing familiarity, non sequitur, or (on at least one definition of “God”) may be a mere tautology: “If God does exist,…then God is personal and moral.”
The argument/syllogism is a hypothetical deduction, not categorical or disjunctive. Notice the word “If”. The argument is a sound structure. The question is whether or not you agree with the premises. Quoting other philosophers is simply offering food for thought.
Also, when you say “He should write what he literally means”, perhaps his word limit may have hindered that. Try asking him directly.
I have always agreed with your first sentence. When I began reading Dr. Marshall’s argument I immediately noticed the word “if” and the fact that the argument has a valid (not “sound”) structure, namely modus tollens. I made very clear my doubt of premise 1. “Quoting other philosophers is simply offering food for thought” exemplifies a cognitive error known as “mind-reading.” In your penultimate sentence, “perhaps” and “may have” are weak excuses, particularly since there is no reason to think that writing literally takes any more words than writing metaphorically, and if it were true that he uses words to “simply offer…food for thought” he would have much better used that many words to express literally a crucially important concept, instead.
Although I have some expertise in philosophy, I confess my abilities with a computer are deficient, so please tell me exactly how to “ask…him directly.”
You’re right, I meant “valid” structure.
I just meant you can address him directly in this forum. Easy solution.
When I say “perhaps” and “may have” I’m offering suggestions to consider, not making excuses.
When I say “quoting other philosophers is simply offering food for thought” I say this as an occasional fact, not to speak for Dr Marshall. Now you’re committing the cognitive error known as mind reading. You’re overthinking my comment and reading something in that’s not there.
Your first sentence you claim Dr Marshall fails to demonstrate premise 1 is true. I thought the atheist would object to premise 2. Premise 1 seems self evident. The theist holds objective to mean unchanging as well as transcending. Relative moral values (on the atheist view) would change over time from changing sentiments, opinion, popular vote, personal/individual preference, and, even evolution, on the atheist view, will be the instrument or morality changing over time. I think Dr Marshall would agree. Please don’t cite me for committing the mind reading fallicy. You never know, I might know him and perhaps he’s already told me his view. You may commit the fallicy of jumping to conclusions, lol.
Note there is no evidence that “unchanging as well as transcending” values exist; in fact, ample evidence they don’t. Ergo the second premise is false if you are using that definition; whereas if you adopt the only definition that corresponds to real observed facts (actual evidence), only values that don’t change with belief (but do change with physical circumstances) and exist inherently in social systems (not transcendantly outside them) are known to exist. And on that definition, the first premise is false. See My Reply.
There’s an aphorism in my extended family: “If you know how to do it, it’s easy; if you don’t, it’s impossible.” This aphorism applies to the second line of your 11:16 PM reply. In the last sentence of my 8:51 PM reply, I felt that I asked for assistance politely and humbly. I’ll charitably assume you meant the second line as responsive. To detail my problem: I see that it is easy to post on this forum by clicking on “REPLY.” However, I don’t see anywhere to reply to Dr. Marshall. That’s why my original request was for “exact…” instructions. Of course, you’re under no obligation to respond again.
As to the third sentence of the 11:16 PM reply, what I wrote about “excuses” has some inductive support from the stance in previous posts–writing as an apologist for Dr. Wallace. In addition, I offered an unrebutted argument. Nevertheless, I assure you I bear no personal animosity, so I’ll take you at your word and drop the issue.
I have the same inductive support for what I wrote, to which you replied with paragraph four. I also offered a related, unrebutted argument. Of course, inductive evidence establishes probability, at best. Again, I take you at your word and drop the issue.
Referring to paragraph five:”self evident” should be hyphenated and “fallicy” should be spelled “fallacy.” Having checked four reference sources, I can’t find any fallacy called mind reading fallacy. Do you know Dr. Marshall? Has he already told you his view? If you wish to answer, I trust in your honesty. I value truth and honesty very highly. I have learned from you, and I hope you may have learned from me. I find every day exciting, if for no other reason than that I have the opportunity to learn something new. I’m reminded of a French proverb: “you either succeed, or you learn.” I never intend to offend, and I hope I have not. In that spirit, I send you this reply.
Dr Carrier, I accept internal evidence as being sufficient as long as it’s well thought out.
Do you accept historical (written) evidence as “actual evidence” or reject it since it’s not observed as you say.
Also, in my 5th paragraph, in the parentheses, I incorrectly misstated theist instead of atheist. Can you please fix that? Thanks
Fixing: I can fix a comment, but I need clearer direction as to what you want fixed (a quotation of the incorrect line followed by a corrected version would be the easiest to effect).
Evidence: If by “actual evidence” you mean evidence that increases the probability of a proposition, then that depends on whether written evidence does that or not; it may or may not; it might even reduce that probability.
But if you mean to ask what the connection is between “a text as evidence” and “what the text says is true” that’s what the entire science of history is concerned with ascertaining text-by-text. If all written texts were always true, we wouldn’t need history as a field, except to just collect and index all the texts. A text is always evidence something happened: someone wrote the text, for some reason (e.g. not randomly, unless, bizarrely, that was someone’s object in producing a given text, but then that’s just another hypothesis about how and why the text came to exist). Who wrote it and for what reason are hypotheses about the text, i.e. they are theories about how the evidence (the text) came to exist. Likewise whether the person who wrote it wrote what they knew to be true or not, or whether they were justified in claiming to know it was true, are both hypothesis about the person, and thus hypotheses about the hypotheses about how the text came to exist.
From all of this we can back-reconstruct historical facts on a scale of probabilities, by gathering evidence corroborating or undermining the involved system of hypotheses. That’s the entire task of history as a field. I describe the methods and logic and limitations of it, i.e. how we can get probable historical facts from texts, in Proving History.
John, I understood your request for assistance regarding replying to Dr Marshall directly as polite and my response was intended to be polite. The confusion was a problem in my assumptions. Sorry.
As far as my rare misspelled words and unhyphenated words, I usually use my phone and in haste will use the suggested words and those errors slip in unnoticed.
On the “mind reading fallacy” I was just responding to your “exemplifies a cognitive error known as mind reading” comment to me. I hoped you would have sensed my jovial tone in my response. I did add the word fallacy since we both know that a fallacy is a reasoning/logic error. I actually do know Dr Marshall and his wonderful family and he does tell me his views.
I also am learning from you and others as we exchange views. Thank you for the kind comment.
So back to the argument, I still am curious as to how you find premise 1 as false if that is what you are implying. The argument is laid out and then usually people will object by pointing out the specific flaw. I think I understand that you believe God doesn’t exist so that leaves the question of whether or not moral values and duties can have an objective grounding without a personal and moral God. For clarity, by objective we mean those moral values won’t change with the times, personal opinion or preferences, popular vote etc. But such is the case with humans. Theists don’t say (or at least shouldn’t) that atheists don’t or can’t recognize and embrace good moral values but when there is a conflict, where or to what do they appeal without pointing to opinion, those in power, popular vote (which is the ad populum fallacy) personal preference etc?
I don’t consider your response impolite. Your tone was jovial, as “lol” makes most clear.
Dr. Carrier responds to your last paragraph in the reply above on July 9, 2019 at 11:28 AM and in his reply to Dr. Marshall. I have read virtually all of Dr. Carrier’s blogs over many years, and the ones about morality are available to anyone. I have also read most of his books (and articles in other editors’ books), some of which argue cogently for his moral view.
I feel that we have developed something of a cordial relationship during our exchanges, so I’ll confide part of my situation to you, so you will understand why I must limit my philosophical exchanges. I am seventy-one years old, and I recently had two heart attacks requiring two angioplasties with three stents. The lower part of my heart perished, I have also had two recent procedures on my back, under general anesthesia. The upshot is that I am short of energy, and serious cogitating drains a lot of energy. I am subject to attacks of fatigue. Due to these circumstances, I sleep long hours at night and during the day.
I hope Dr. Carrier answers any further questions you have.
I send my sincere best wishes to you.
P.S. Here is a joke I hope you enjoy: Dr. Metterling, a pioneer in psychoanalysis, at age ninety-five is revising his autobiography to include himself.
July 6, 11:16 pm. 5th paragraph, 5th sentence in the parentheses I wrote “on the theist view”. I meant to say “on the atheist view”.
Okay. I think I got it fixed.
Dr. Marshal states in his first premise that if God doesn’t exist, moral values and moral duties don’t exist. And he defines “objective” as “something that would be wrong even if everyone on the planet thought it was okay.”
With respect to “moral values”, I think it depends on the definition of “morality” (if Dr. Marshal has defined morality and I have missed it, I apologize). The Oxford dictionary defines it as “Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior”. This is a bit vague because it’s not clear as to what constitutes right/good and wrong/bad behavior. As Dr. Marshal pointed out, a popular view is that morally good behavior is that which promotes human flourishing/well-being (this is a great way to define it and I believe that theists think of morality in these terms too, since their goal is to have a peaceful and loving relationship with God and to secure a place in paradise. These are things that would create well-being). So on this view, even if every single person on the planet thought a certain behavior was wrong, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is objectively wrong, since it may be conducive to human flourishing.
With respect to moral duties, is the sense that if you want to achieve X then you need to do Y, then there can be moral duties on atheism. You need a goal on both atheism and theism to have a “moral duty”. Suppose you manage to convince someone that God’s is the foundation of morality, one would still need to have the goal of wanting to avoid punishment from God for it to become a “duty” (for some reason, I don’t like the way the word “duty” is being used here).
Dr. Marshal said that people would have to agree that the goal of morality is human flourishing for secular morality to work (again this goes both ways) and that coercing them to conform wouldn’t be moral. This makes no sense. The right response to people who are impinging on human flourishing is to coerce them or limit their freedom in some way.
Another interesting point… imagine a scenario where God commands something that goes against human flourishing. On theism, would this be morally right? If one says that God would never command such a thing, then they have implicitly agreed that the goal of morality is human flourishing.