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, and now are moving on to his “Moral Argument” for the existence of God, which he originally briefed here, and to which I briefly responded here. And now below is my response to Marshall’s recent elaboration of that argument.


That the Evidence Points to Atheism (X)

by Richard Carrier, Ph.D.

Dr. Marshall rests on an equivocation fallacy, requiring one meaning of “objective moral values and duties” in his first premise (non-consequentialist values and duties), then a different one in his second (consequentialist values and duties). So his conclusion doesn’t follow. And any consistent definition results in either his first or second premise being false. So the argument doesn’t carry.

State of the Field

Marshall rightly says this is about “what morality is, and what seems necessary to ground it.” But he relies on a bunch of old or obsolete philosophy to press a case that morality must be “strange” and therefore inexplicable without God, ignoring all contrary philosophy and all relevant science (from anthropology and sociology to neuroscience).

Marshall cherry picks philosophers in his support who likewise ignore science and don’t address any of the latest defenses of naturalistic moral realism, just like Marshall—rendering his and their arguments against it impotent and uninformed. [1] In fact most atheist philosophers today are moral realists: roughly 60% by latest survey. [2] Ask why so many experts don’t affirm Marshall’s premises. Including Pinker and Dawkins, whom Marshall incorrectly cites on his side. [3]

Defining “Objective”

I’ve already said whether “objective moral values” exist depends on how one defines “objective.” In the sense of “exists even when minds do not,” there is no evidence any such values exist or even matter (in which case Marshall’s second premise is false). In the sense of “what all rational and fully informed minds would follow,” they exist necessarily (as the realizable potentials of any given universe); therefore no God is required (then Marshall’s first premise is false). [4]

What all people mean by “moral” and parallel terms in all cultures throughout history is “that which we ought to do above all else.” Nothing more. And what all such people mean by “ought to do” is what all good, rational, and informed persons will do in the same circumstances. And what all such people mean by “good person” is a person they can tolerate others and themselves being without a net adverse consequence to themselves.

“I will always be more satisfied being such a person and living among such persons than otherwise” entails all morals and is a fact-claim about social systems of cognitive beings. And as such it’s true or false only in virtue of the properties of that system. Thus even a God could not change the moral facts entailed by that system, except by changing it. Because “objective moral values and duties” are facts about people in a social system: that which will leave the highest odds of realizing the most satisfaction for everyone in that system regardless of what anyone in that system might mistakenly think will. [5]

As there will always be some true facts of that kind for all conceivable social systems of cognitive beings, all worlds have “objective moral values and duties.” Ergo no God is needed. They always exist. You need merely discover them. [6] Just like all normative truths about the world (“the best methods of growing food,” “the best ways of restoring health,” etc.).

Warranting Obligation

Dr. Marshall incorrectly assumes a “moral ought implies obligation” in some way consequential oughts don’t. But he can adduce no evidence any other ought-statements are true, for anyone. [7] The only obligations that truthfully exist are consequential: you ought to adhere to a given duty or else you risk a loss to your personal satisfaction, either with yourself or your life or both. If no such loss is risked, then no such duty meaningfully exists (other than as what someone might have improperly wished of you).

The practice of moral praise and blame, and assigning responsibility, are simply actions and statements regarding whether a given person is actually safe to have in our society and someone we’d actually be more satisfied to be like in the relevant characteristic. Which are objective facts about us and them and the system we live in, facts about which we can easily be mistaken, but can learn from empirical study. Indeed the ubiquity of moral error disproves any notion that morality is “properly basic” as Marshall avers. [8]

Systems, Evolution, and Morality

Moral facts about a given system are always true of that system regardless of what anyone believes or thinks they want; but change the system, and you change the moral facts. If everyone who was killed was always promptly resurrected fully healed of all infirmities and injuries, killing deformed babies and people in comas would be a moral duty in that system. That’s how we know morals derive from systems, not from gods.

Dr. Marshall also mistakes what evolution actually produces with the ideal fitness functions it fumbles toward. Evolution is not normative. Much of what it did to us is useful, some not, but now that we’re cognitively aware, we don’t have to serve its ends anymore. We can serve any ends we want. And we’ve found there’s only one end actually worthwhile, for which all others are merely instrumental: satisfaction with our lives and who we’ve become. We can directly perceive now that nothing else is worth living for; and that everything else we value (such as the life-satisfaction of future generations that will outlive us) derives therefrom (regardless of what we think, we’ll actually be happier being the sort of person who values this).

What humans more and more discover is that there could never have been anything worth seeking but a desirable life. And moral values and duties are what we must embody to maximize our opportunity for that. But evolution, being unintelligent and indifferent, did a better-than-nothing but still poor job of developing for us reliable organs of reason and moral perception. Which actually proves there is no God; for He’d be morally obligated to install in us reliable engines of reason and moral perception, while atheism successfully predicts evolution wouldn’t, requiring us to fix it. [9]

Finally, you can’t just rewrite a social and cognitive system, much less on any arbitrary desire you may have. So it’s not the case that you can just “choose” to operate as if a different system exists. Try, and the system that does exist will crush or frustrate you. This is not only true of the social system (“thieves and gang members, serial killers, pedophiles and sadists” and “Nazis” statistically end up nowhere near optimal life-satisfaction, but typically end up crushed or miserable) but also of the cognitive system (such persons are psychologically always dissatisfied, with themselves and the world; often even wallowing in loathing and misery). [10]

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Such is my response to Marshall’s Moral Argument for God. 

Continue on to Marshall’s next reply.

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[1] Alex Rosenberg is particularly inept here: see Richard Carrier, “Rosenberg on Naturalism” (17 November 2009). Indeed contrast all the articles Marshall cites (none of which interact with the latest philosophy or science on the subject) with leading experts in Moral Discourse and Practice (Oxford University Press 1996), Personality, Identity, and Character (Cambridge University Press 2009), and the ongoing multi-volume set Moral Psychology (MIT Press 2007-), particularly Volume 2; as well as: Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation (Princeton University Press 1997); Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality (Princeton University Press 2011); Mark Fedyk, The Social Turn in Moral Psychology (MIT Press 2017); and my own peer reviewed chapter, “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them),” in The End of Christianity, ed. by John Loftus (Prometheus 2011), pp. 333-64, 420-29, including the moral philosophers there cited in support (p. 420 n. 6).

[2] See The PhilPapers Surveys, “Accept or lean toward: moral realism,” answer: 56.4%. Antirealists comprise only 27.7%. The rest responded “Other,” but “Other” included 2.5% answering that they accept an intermediate view (partial moral realism), which puts some form of moral realism at 59.1%. And this was not caused by theism. In the correlation tables, 59.2% of atheist philosophers “Accept or lean toward: moral realism” (386 so-declared out of 651 atheist respondents); which means even more, when adding in “intermediate view” respondents.

[3] Marshall cites Pinker’s NYT article “The Moral Instinct” in which Pinker explicitly defends “moral realism” as at least plausible, saying it “is not crazy” and that there is evidence moral facts exist “in the nature of things,” in accord with Pinker’s comments in Better Angels, pp. 694-95. Pinker’s argument for moral realism is formally developed by Makoto Suzuki in “Moral Realism and the Wide-Spread Directed Change in Moral Judgments”, The Journal of Philosophical Ideas, Special Issue (2017): 245-73. Dawkins is agnostic on the issue, declaring “I don’t feel equipped” to argue the subject in “The Simple Answer: Nick Pollard Talks to Richard Dawkins”, The Third Way 18.3 (April 1995): 19.

[4] For a full explication see Richard Carrier, “The Real Basis of a Moral World” (12 November 2018).

[5] For a full explication see Richard Carrier, “Objective Moral Facts” (15 December 2016).

[6] See Richard Carrier, “How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True?” (11 August 2017).

[7] See Richard Carrier, “Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same” (11 November 2015).

[8] On what “properly basic beliefs” must be limited to see Richard Carrier, “Epistemological End Game” (29 November 2006). The satisfaction-states that I argue are the end-goal of all true moralities might be properly basic, per Dr. Sharon Rawlette, The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness (CreateSpace 2016), but as such are still products of naturalistic cognitive systems, and do not by themselves tell us what behaviors (“values and duties”) will most reliably obtain them.

[9] See my argument that “the evidence of human moral development disproves moral gods” in Richard Carrier, “The Carrier-Marshall Debate: My First Reply” (17 April 2019).

[10] See Richard Carrier, “Your Own Moral Reasoning” (19 March 2018), with: Roger Bergman, “Why Be Moral? A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology” in Human Development 45 (2002): 104-124; Kent Kiehl and Morris Hoffman, “The Criminal Psychopath”, Jurimetrics 51 (Summer 2011): 355-97; and the works on moral psychology and character cited in Note 1 here and in Note 6 in “My Eighth Reply.” And it works both ways round: Rick Nauert, “Happiness Tends to Deter Crime”, PsychCentral (8 August 2018); Stanton Samenow, Inside the Criminal Mind, 3rd. ed. (2014). For both sides of the coin, consult the entire content of James Maddux, ed., Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction (Routledge 2018).

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