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’re now discussing the Moral Argument for the Existence of God. Now below is my latest response to Marshall’s recent defense of that argument.
That the Evidence Points to Atheism (XII)
by Richard Carrier, Ph.D.
Dr. Marshall has no evidence.
Irrationality of Retributivism
Marshall ignored my argument that a universal record of retributivist reasoning is not evidence such reasoning is correct, any more than a universal record of other errors of human reasoning is evidence any such reasoning is correct. You must justify any device of human reasoning before declaring it sound. “Everyone does it” is not a justification.
Humans evolved many heuristic short-cuts that are not logically sound but adaptive only because they are better than nothing, like feeling unease at bad people “getting away with it,” which motivates people to regulate behavior communally and in themselves; it just happens that it can also cause the erroneous belief that pointless torment is a moral good. That feeling, however, like feeling the presence of ghosts, does not correspond to anything true. It’s simply an error we picked up because it had a useful effect: to motivate us to loathe misbehavior and thus combat it. It has no function otherwise.
By contrast, cultures also universally adopt consequentialist moral reasoning, which we can verify scientifically is necessary for functional societies and internal health and motivation. [1] Marshall has no comparable evidence retributivist reasoning is logically valid. It isn’t. No rational, informed person would endorse it. Only the ignorant or irrational do. And what Dr. Marshall has no valid evidence is true, cannot be evidence for a god.
Guilt Is Consequentialist
Dr. Marshall incorrectly says I “think informed humans should outgrow notions like ‘transgression’, ‘moral outrage’, ‘guilt’, and retributive punishment.” I only said that last cannot be rationally defended. The rest are consequentialist: our concepts of transgression effect our accounting of the risk a transgressor poses to a community; and guilt and moral outrage motivate moral policing (and self-policing) which likewise, when rationally deployed and activated by true rather than false beliefs, reduces the consequential risks to self and others that misbehavior produces. Marshall has no evidence it’s otherwise. And what he has no evidence for, cannot evince God.
No More Pseudoscience
Dr. Marshall’s moral theories are pseudoscience; and God’s existence cannot be defended with pseudoscience. We have quite a lot of science on the “fundamental features of our moral experience” and they all support the moral theory I’m talking about; not his. [2]
For example, Dr. Marshall wants it to be true that moral imperatives require something “besides” consequences for their truth conditions. He’s never presented any evidence of this. Whereas I’ve presented abundant evidence that consequences are both necessary and sufficient to demonstrate an imperative is true for any rationally informed actor. Marshall has not demonstrated any other kind of imperative to be true. And what he can’t show is true, can’t be evidence for God.
Marshall likewise references “Providence” as training us, but there’s no evidence of this. Nature is actually a messy and inconsistent moral educator; and our evolved moral senses are conflicting and badly designed. Which is actually evidence against a moral God. Meanwhile, Game Theoretic modeling shows that despite these imperfections, statistically, following a reasonably modulated Golden Rule produces the best outcome for all actors. We therefore need no God for this to be true or for us to discover it. [3]
I’ve told Marshall this repeatedly, yet he still thinks this is a “hurdle” we haven’t overcome; we have. He thinks we can’t show it hasn’t “outlived its evolutionary usefulness” when in fact Game Theoretic modeling has proved it not only hasn’t but never can—for any rationally guided social species. Satisfaction living by a rationally ramified Golden Rule is thus “precisely the kind of” thing “evolution would have invented” emotional states to motivate us toward. [4] And science shows evolution has done precisely that. [5] Both externally (in studies of reciprocal altruism, for example) and internally (in studies of moral conscience and the role of self-regard in personal satisfaction). [6]
By contrast, Dr. Marshall says one should “derive [their self-]satisfaction from the knowledge that he is living in accord with the Creator of all things,” but there’s zero empirical data on what that would even be. [7] The Bible, revelation, intuition, all unreliable. [8] No one has access to the information Marshall claims we should be basing our morals on. And no evidence of that, means no evidence for God.
Jacques and the Nazis
Dr. Marshall then tries to use Nazis as somehow evincing his magical extra “something” that consequentialism doesn’t produce. He dismisses the correct observation that Nazis based their morals on false beliefs. (And nothing derived from false premises can be true, except by accidents too improbable to trust. [9]) Then argues he should get to call them evil for no reason.
Nazis can only be evil for reasons. Not “just because.” And those reasons will always be consequences, which the Nazis themselves experienced externally in mass death, humiliation, regret, and defeat, but also in their own consciences, being among the most angry and dissatisfied people on the planet, awash with false beliefs about Jews and others, incorrectly blaming them for all their actual ills, and fallaciously using these false beliefs to rationalize their hatred and anger and other unreflective, base emotions.
In other words, Nazis were just wrong; and were statistically the more miserable because of it, taking actions that were crippling and destructive to themselves and their communities.
But what we mean by calling them “evil” is that their hatred and inhumanity, justified (and only justifiable) by a system of false beliefs, causes evil, as in, widespread intentional harm to humanity and even themselves. What people mean by an evil character is a character that generates very negative consequences to others—and does so intentionally, rather than by any justified ignorance of the harm being caused. This only verifies ordinary consequentialism. Which does nothing to evince God.
Everyone, even the Nazis, as a matter of actual fact would have been better off being genuinely moral to each other. As that is an irrefutable fact, there is no possible way to argue we “need God” for that to be the case, or to notice it. [10]
For the same reason, Dr. Marshall still doesn’t understand why his Jacque the Art Thief would actually be statistically worse off than his hypothetical counterpart who was more empathic, humble, and self-reflective. But no other reason need exist for him to prefer the latter version of himself. [11] That people are not perfectly rational nor immune to false beliefs, thus making it difficult for them to see this fact, does not change this fact. That there are irrational people acting on false beliefs to justify their immorality can never justify immorality. Morality only follows from the truth.
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Such is my latest response to Marshall’s Moral Argument for God.
Continue on to Marshall’s next reply.
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[1] See Richard Carrier, “The Real Basis of a Moral World” (12 November 2018).
[2] Besides what I already listed in Note 3 of my Eleventh Reply (14 July 2019), see, for example: Yu et al. “Neural Substrates of Intention–Consequence Integration and Its Impact on Reactive Punishment in Interpersonal Transgression” Journal of Neuroscience 35.12 (25 March 2015): 4917-25; “Moral Judgments Can Be Altered: Neuroscientists Influence People’s Moral Judgments by Disrupting Specific Brain Region” ScienceDaily (30 March 2010); Borg et al., “Consequences, Action, and Intention as Factors in Moral Judgments: An fMRI Investigation” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18.5 (2006): 803-17; Pascual et al. “How Does Morality Work in the Brain?” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 7.65 (12 September 2013).
[3] Again see Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation (Princeton University Press 1997), which I brief in Richard Carrier, “The Real Basis of a Moral World” (12 November 2018).
[4] That morality is as much discovered as invented (crudely by evolution, and now better by human observers), see Richard Carrier, “How Can Morals Be Both Invented and True?” (21 August 2017).
[5] See, again, Note 3 in My Eleventh Reply (14 July 2019).
[6] For summary see, again, Richard Carrier, “Your Own Moral Reasoning” (19 March 2018). But for examples of surveys of the science see, once again: Roger Bergman, “Why Be Moral? A Conceptual Model from Developmental Psychology” in Human Development 45 (2002); Narvaez & Lapsley, eds., Personality, Identity, and Character (Cambridge University Press 2009); James Maddux, ed., Subjective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction (Routledge 2018); Patricia Churchland, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality (Princeton University Press 2011); Mark Fedyk, The Social Turn in Moral Psychology (MIT Press 2017). Both points hold even for sociopaths: e.g., Kent Kiehl and Morris Hoffman, “The Criminal Psychopath” Jurimetrics 51 (Summer 2011).
[7] Again see Richard Carrier, “The Moral Bankruptcy of Divine Command Theory: Matthew Flannagan’s Failed Defense” (8 October 2015).
[8] “The Bible endorses the immorality of slavery (even Jesus uses it as a moral exemplar), and says nothing for democracy or human rights or universal suffrage or equality (the New Testament in fact condemns it); nor freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or respect for personal autonomy (all condemned by the Bible),” Richard Carrier, My Sixth Reply (2 June 2019; with which see the corresponding Note 12). “Including God’s vile command that we murder anyone who exercises their freedom of speech, religion, or sexual autonomy (Deuteronomy 12:1-13:16, Leviticus 24:11-16, Numbers 15:32-36; Deuteronomy 22:13-30, Leviticus 20:13), the Lord’s recommendation to mutilate yourself for having disapproved thoughts (Matthew 18:8-9), and God’s failure to correct the New Testament commandment to subjugate women (1 Timothy 2:11-15). And more,” including “God’s commandment to engage in chattel slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46),” Richard Carrier, My Eighth Reply (10 June 2019). And see “What We Can’t Overlook” in My First Reply (17 April 2019).
[9] On the uselessness of accidental knowledge see Richard Carrier, “The Gettier Problem” (5 December 2013).
[10] For the full basis of this whole “what’s wrong with Nazis” point see Richard Carrier, Sense and Goodness without God (2005): pp. 336-37.
[11] See once again my survey of the external and internal reasons a Jacques would, if rationally informed, prefer to be a different version of himself in Richard Carrier, “Your Own Moral Reasoning” (19 March 2018).
Two very minor corrections to consider: the date at the end of footnote [4] should be AUGUST 21, 2017; in line 1 of footnote [11] the name should be spelled “Jacques.”
Thanks. Fixed.
I’ve been thinking about Jacques and the Nazis in regards to Dr. Carrier’s morality and theistic morality. Let’s say both Dr. Marshall and Dr. Carrier could travel back in time to talk to a Nazi commander (and assuming they could speak the language). If both were given the chance to change that one Nazi’s mind, whose morality would actually win out and who would be more persuasive.
Both debaters would ultimately be forced to use Dr. Carrier’s morality (appealing to internal or external consequences), but that Dr. Marshall would be the more persuasive. The Nazis were religious (in their ideology even if we ignore them being Christian), and I think that a religious argument would better sway the Nazi commander emotionally. And this, I think, explains a lot of what is going on in the current debate topic. Dr. Carrier is explaining how things actually are, and the true mechanisms behind morality (including the built-in irrationality of humans). Dr. Marshall is arguing how humans want things to be (leaning into their irrationality instead of trying to combat it), and thus what tends to sway them.
That the Nazis were religious is precisely why a religious argument wouldn’t work: they already rejected precisely those arguments and adopted instead religious arguments for their contrary morals. Their religious convictions them made them immune to straightforward facts and reason as well. This is precisely the danger of religion (or indeed any faith-committed dogma).
You can’t defeat delusion with appeals to God. Once the Nazis believed God was on their side, and they did, you can’t just “insist” he isn’t, as if they would admit you know better than they do. You would have to persuade them you do. Which requires demonstrative access to God’s mind in some special way they don’t likewise already claim. And you don’t have that. You would say God thinks X; they would say God thinks Y; and you’d both have “interpretations” of data supporting your disagreement. And that would be the end of it.
Hence, were your case for Y persuasive, they’d already have been persuaded by it, and wouldn’t have been Nazis. Thus clearly something more is needed.
In reality that something more often isn’t available once a society has gotten to that point. We know exceptions (Nazis who were in fact persuaded and defected). But really, delusion is often immutable. Once someone is committed to a false belief system, it is almost impossible to divest them of that, by any facts or reasoning. Because their delusion renders them immune to facts and reason. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t have that delusion, and wouldn’t need to be persuaded.
This is why you must not confuse two different things, as you just did here: what is true is not the same thing as what it takes to get someone to recognize that it’s true. Young Earth Creationists cannot recognize the truth no matter how much evidence and rational argument vetting they encounter; that is not therefore an argument that Young Earth Creationism is true. What makes evolution by natural selection true is a body of facts analyzed without fallacy; but what persuades someone that it is true, is a battery of psychological and sociological devices aimed at breaking through emotional and delusional resistance to the truth.
That you can use those same devices to persuade someone of a false belief is not therefore an argument that that belief is then true.
Thus, even were it true that lying to Nazis about what God wants would in fact make them obey a certain moral system, it would not follow that the moral system you thus persuaded them of is true. And this is where your problem lies: you have no more evidence your version of what God wants is any more true than theirs; so even if you could persuade them to side with your version, it still would not follow that your version was correct.
A completely different set of criteria determine which moral system is true. No mere appeals to emotion can constitute it.
The more I think about it the more I’m convinced that morality is a human invention.
The part that I’m struggling with is trying to determine what should (or “ought” to be) the basis for which our moral system need be concerned with.
Let;s say that there highly intelligent aliens from some other Universe that dropped in to do an analysis of what moral system and beliefs humans “ought” to have. They would have no bias or vested interest in the outcome so as to blindly and unfairly give humans an over other creatures on this planet. And they would be capable of easily mastering Sam Harris’s proposed moral landscape for the most moral outcome.
Being highly intelligent that could quickly and more easily discern what all conscious creatures experience with respect to pain and pleasure. Such conscience experience would be the basis for what they come up with as a more equitable system of moral values for the overall well being of the human race in conjunction with (and in consideration of) what all conscience creatures experience.
I bring this up because I suspect that almost nobody would want to accept and adopt their findings. For example even if you could understand the magnitude of how your actions hurt other people or animals, would you really want to change your behavior to suit them?. For example if you were an avid hunter or fisher (for sport) and you could somehow understand the pain and trauma that an animal might (e.g. the moment that a deer is shot and starts to die or when a fish gets hooked and pulled out of the water into a boat). But you would have to weigh that against the agony that you would feel by not being able to do for you makes life worth living (hunting or fishing).
This is where the “ought” gets tricky. Even if we could be convinced by the audit findings of the highly intelligent aliens that the pain and torment caused to animals is of greater negative impact to them than the positive impact to us (from a conscious experience standpoint), there is still the fact that we have a dog in the fight (so to speak). We are not so unbiased. Generally speaking we are first and foremost concerned with our own conscious experiences (and quality of life).
So then the question is why should we be as concerned with (value) the conscious experience of all others based on such a fair, unbiased assessment when we actually do have a dog in the fight.
I don’t think that most hunters or fishers “loathe” themselves. And to the exact that they could (given the insight from the alien’s findings) they might loathe themselves more if they were forced to give up what they love doing.
My point here is that we even if we could come up with what constitutes the perfect moral system and set of values, I’m not convinced that our human species or even each of us individually would be better off following it. Having said that how could we make the argument that we humans “ought” to follow such a system even if/when it is sometimes to our individual detriment (but overall better for everyone/everything involved).
I suspect that at best we come up with some hybrid form of that (which is what we have now). Which would be less than the ideal “moral”system (from the standpoint of an objective unbiased alien) but still in our own best interest.
Those aliens would be able to show us the data, if they discovered things we yet had not. Just as in every other science.
I’m not sure what you think the metric is for a “perfect” moral system. That’s almost a nonsense concept. There are only true and false moral systems. The only challenge is figuring out which is which.
However, there can be “better” and “worse” moral systems in either of two different senses: in the first sense, you can have a better one the more true it is (e.g. the more and more you purge false moral imperatives and include true ones), which is the demonstrated thesis of such books as The Moral Arc and Better Angels (a thesis I already had articulated myself in Sense and Goodness, pp. 303-07, but they prove it extensively); and in the second sense, one can have a “better” one in the sense of its having more capability in realizing our desired ends, but this only differs from the first sense when means and circumstances block us from obtaining it, but then that means we are doing the most moral thing available to us already, and would only wish our means and circumstances were different so we had better available choices.
In the second sense, that’s simply a complaint about the amoral and indifferent design and governance of the natural world (something a moral God, if he existed, would have fixed by now). In the first sense, that’s simply a request that we work harder to ascertain the truth and an admission have a lot left yet to learn, as we could request and admit of literally every other empirical science.
The National Socialists and Wurkrs Party membrs
wurn’t born National Socialists and Wurkrs party membrs but became thus. Some did unbecome this eg those whu sought t kill hitler or Werner von Braun – the apollo moon landing programme director.
And prhaps Dr Jason Lisle – a YEC and a scientist and Dr Carrier could chat. That’d be top.
‘Dr Jason Lisle is a creationist with a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado Boulder. Lisle earned his undergraduate degree from Ohio Wesleyan University summa cum laude with a double-major in physics and astronomy and a minor in mathematics…
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jason_Lisle
I don’t understand the relevance of referring to Lisle.
Von Braun, meanwhile, was ashamed of his role and would have been more so had he not cultivated false beliefs about it to avoid confronting its terrifying reality. Thus illustrating how important false beliefs are to sustaining false moralities and a false sense of self.
Dr Carrier, I mentiondc Dr Lisle only as u’d brought up his beliefs.
“Young Earth Creationists cannot recognize the truth no matter how much evidence and rational argument vetting they encounter; that is not therefore an argument that Young Earth Creationism is true.”
Dr Lisle wud nevr say he rijects eviduns, argumunt or facts – but wud proffer only that he disputes your interpretation of these things.
As do all delusional and irrational people.
And vice versa.
Dr Lisle wud avur that he’s got divine worrunt t rispond in kind:
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Yeah. Because that’s delusional and irrational. And he’s delusional and irrational.
Just to clarify, that distinction between what is true and how we get people believe is the thing I was trying to point out (perhaps poorly). I think it’s obvious that your version of morality is the actually true of the two on offer. But I think these religious arguments from morality really boil down to emotional appeals. And emotional appeals tend to be more persuasive than facts.
That emotional appeals are more persuasive than the truth is a problem, not a virtue.
That’s why we have so many false moralities, adhered to with such conviction.
Hi. I am reading Churchland’s Brain Trust on your recommendation. It is an excellent book. In particular, she discusses the role of oxytocin regarding trust and sociability in humans. In the opening paragraph of Chapter 4 she mentions a possible link between oxytocin and endogenous opiates. “Doing good feels good—at least sometimes”.
I’ve been following your links to various articles, which have been very rewarding, but they are primarily fMRI studies. I was wondering if you know of any further studies on this particular oxytocin—endogenous opiate interaction, which seems like it could be something of a smoking gun in the current discussion.
The link she provides is behind a paywall. If you know of any research along the same lines I’d be interested. Just off the top of your head. (I really didn’t think I’d be asking this question at the start of this debate!)
Thanks.
No, oxytocin is a red herring. The specific parts used in the machine are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what the machine is doing. Not what molecules or electrons it uses to do it with.
By analogy, it doesn’t matter whether the engine under your car’s hood runs on hydrogen or diesel. What matters is whether it moves the car forward. It likewise doesn’t matter whether your computer’s circuits employ germanium or gallium. What matters is whether they successfully run computations. And so on.
Chemistry is just the microcircuitry of the brain. The effect of which is the running of computations that produces effects, such as the phenomenology of experience (contentment, discontentment, auditory perceptions, semantic comprehensions, etc.). It is wholly irrelevant what chemicals are used to do that. What matters is when and why those systems produce certain effects.
Dr. Carrier you commonly point out our errors of human reasoning. And I don’t at all disagree with you on this point.
But for whatever reason you’ve seem convinced that our minds are finely tuned and not prone to error when it comes to self assessment with respect to our ability or willingness to see and internalize our moral thoughts and behaviors.
You seem to discount the impact that our delusions and biases can have on us when it comes to moral assessments of ourselves in others. I think we are all guilty is some. Some of us more so than others. Some of us mostly in small less important things but some of us in larger more important things.
You since convinced that our minds are finely tuned in this respect and thus in every instance, and to the proper degree everyone will necessarily “loathe” themselves accordingly for their immoral behaviors.
I suspect the reason is that psychologically you feel the need to come up with a moral system (ideology) that is fail proof.
But I don’t think that is necessary. I think that we can say that given the fact that we are imperfect (from the standpoint of human reasoning, inherent biases, etc.) we can’t realistically devise a moral system that is actually perfect in practice.
I think that it is good enough (the best we can hope for actually) is to demonstrate that moral system X works better than moral system Y for such and such specific reasons.
To the contrary. I have repeatedly referenced and even cited the science proving the contrary: humans are frequently caught in delusional systems of false beliefs about themselves and the world, and don’t correctly identify the real causes of their dissatisfactions.
Morality is what follows from true beliefs. Not what follows from false beliefs.
It’s not about what’s “perfect.” It’s simply about what’s true.
Ask of any particular imperative claim “Is that what I, in my actual circumstances, actually ought to do?”
The rest is just satisfying the requisite truth conditions.
Dr. Marshall wrote:
‘Dr. Carrier will of course object, “But the Nazis were misinformed in their calculations!” And so we would all want to say, but it would hardly be the first, or essential thing we would want to say, which would rather be, “I don’t care what your calculations are: what you are doing is evil!”’
Is this supposed to be evidence for theism? Because “What you are doing is evil” was essentially the exact opposite of the response from the Catholic church at the time. And the very large number of theistic white supremacists and neo-Nazis today also don’t seem to have gotten the memo, either. Is he trying to undermine his own argument?
To be fair, I assume Dr. Marshall would say the Catholics (official and lay) who didn’t secretly or openly oppose the Nazi regime and its goals were bad Catholics (and likewise pro-Neonazi Catholics today), and confess Christians are frequent failures in upholding their own religion’s ideals. Ditto all other Christian sects (some of which uniformly opposed the Nazis, e.g. the Jehovah’s Witnesses were targeted for mass incarceration and murder for their lack of cooperation).
That defense has other negative consequences for his position, sure, but it would at least be honest.
Yes, I’d be interested to hear his thoughts, since that would be a weak response. There’s an obvious “No true Scotsman” fallacy in there, but the bigger problem I think is that, by and large, they didn’t/don’t consider themselves bad Christians – the Nazis (and the KKK, and many other modern groups) considered god to be on their side.
So it seems the theistic view would need to argue either that they were right, meaning god has different, mutually-incompatible rules for morality for different people (and the same people at different times), or that they were wrong, implying that god has one set of rules, but many people are wrong about what they are, and there’s no reliable way to figure out who’s right. That seems to indicate that “theistic morals” are useless – actually, worse than useless, since they lead people to do evil things while believing they are good.
In any case, re: the debate topic, it looks to me like these facts are entirely inconsistent with theism (or at least monotheism – maybe there are many gods with very different moral instructions, but I don’t think that’s Dr. Marshall’s argument) and exactly what we would expect if gods were a human invention. Which is to say, if I were arguing that the evidence points to theism, I’d do my best to avoid mentioning the Nazis!
Right. That’s that other problem I was referring to. Which I’ve discussed before.
Once you decide morals come from God, then morals can be literally anything you want them to be, you just have to convince yourself you’re getting them from God. Hence the vast diversity of evil or morally compromised religions and sects.
Because there is no objective empirical access to any of God’s thoughts about what’s actually moral. It’s all a subjective invention of human minds. Even external texts, like scriptures, are so, and demonstrably face the same problem: they are not based on any independently, empirically verifiable facts about God. They are just “what someone thinks God told them” (or wants us to think God told them).
See my discussion of this under Divine Command Theory (and the point holds even if a theist rejects DCT and adopts something like “morals are entailed by God’s nature” or something; doesn’t solve the problem at all).
Interestingly, I literally just now got a notice for this new book.
The abstract’s translation from Google:
“God exists” is not a useful refutation of interpretations like this of what God wants. They all come from the same source with the same reliability. Theism is thus in practice just as culturally relativistic as the cultural relativism they purport to despise. Indeed worse, as modern cultural relativism is sophisticated enough to build its moralities on evidence and demonstrable facts; theistic relativism has neither.
“Our concepts of transgression effect our accounting of the risk a transgressor poses”
affect – the concepts are influencing our accounting
That’s not what I meant though. I meant effect as in bring about. Not affect as in alter or influence. Although either I suppose is true.
Perhaps this is off subject somewhat (or largely) but I’d be interested to see what your thoughts (and Marshall’s as well) are about the evolutionary roots of our morality. Such as those studied by Frans De Waal and Virginia Morell. I’ve seen a number of fundamentalists try and handwave this away as being only “feelings” and claim we’re special because we’re able to gaze into our navel and find it profound. As if the unfounded mental masturbation of thinking about a possible afterlife supersede the roots of the behaviors we see in primates where they show reciprocity, reconciliation, conflict resolution, empathy, cooperation, and on and on…. And these are of course not limited to primates. Ants even display behaviors that IMO clearly indicate that there isn’t some top down morality. Other social species very well may exceed our wildest imaginations. It is after all very difficult to test much of this. I think it’s hard to examine this work and not come away with the impression that we both get our morality through natural selection as well as through reasoned evaluation of behaviors over time.
I hope this makes sense to some degree. It’s late and I’m struggling to stay awake and order what it is I’m trying to say.
We’ve both discussed our take on this question in this debate. Check through all the entries on the Moral Argument.
In sum, we both agree some moral sentiments evolved, and that this doesn’t make them normative—and for my part, we know this because plenty of irrational and toxic motivations also evolved in our brains. So “it evolved” is not an argument for “we should obey it.”
My response to which is:
As with logic and reasoning generally—where evolution has tacked “toward” rationality but really only generated a massive podge of random abilities much of which are deeply flawed and only selected for because they were better than a complete lack of reason—evolved moral sentiments also represent tacking “toward” true moralities but have not actually gotten there, much of what we evolved being deeply flawed and only selected for because it was better than a complete lack of moral reasoning.
And just as humans could step in and build tools of reason as a “software patch” that fixes all the defects in our evolved reasoning with a more perfect and correct (as in, optimally truth-finding) system (e.g. formal logic and mathematics and the scientific method, which are all actually counter-intuitive, i.e. they go against our evolved reasoning abilities, but in doing so fix the deep flaws in the latter with “workarounds”), humans could step in and build tools of moral reasoning as a “software patch” that fixes all the defects in our evolved moral reasoning with a more perfect and correct (as in, optimally happiness-generating) system (e.g. moral psychology and sociology, moral philosophy, Game Theory, etc., which are all actually counter-intuitive, i.e. they sometimes go against our evolved moral reasoning abilities, but in doing so fix the deep flaws in the latter with “workarounds”).
Marshall, by contrast, thinks this software patch comes from God. Of course, IMO, the evidence very clearly shows otherwise. We’ve been debating that point really from day one (see our opening statements and then our exchange on my Argument from Indifference, as well as what we are just about to wrap on, his Moral Argument).
I went back and saw the original end date was scheduled around July 15th. Are you and Dr. Marshall intending to continue the debate or should we expect closing remarks coming soon?
We will be closing out with the next two entries (his last on the Moral Argument and my final reply).
We might resume someday in future (we’ve discussed a desire to finish the last few remaining arguments). But we both have a lot of other projects the next several months so it could be awhile before we get back to it.
The main argument I’ve heard from theists against secular morality is that secular morality lacks an objective framework. Maybe it lacks a complete framework, but it’s a framework that we are working on, with well-being as its objective, which we can objectively measure. Just like every philosophical and scientific system, it’s not perfect and it’s something we need to strive to perfect. Of course it would be better if there was an objective list indicating what is morally good and morally evil, that applies to every person of every nation, that covers all the potential scenarios and outcomes. But where is it? Christians and Jews will point to the Bible. But even Christians among themselves disagree on what god’s will is. Are we supposed to follow the 10 commandments? The 613 commandments? Are we just supposed have faith in the resurrection? or Do the commandments only apply to god’s chosen people? Was Jesus a false prophet like the Jews believe?
You can’t get people of the same religion to agree let alone people of different religions, especially religions that are radically different from the Abrahamic religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism. Dr. Marshal implied in a previous reply that the objective moral standard is within us (at least that’s what I understood). Again, then why is there is so much disagreement even among people who believe in the right god? Or hasn’t anyone discovered the right god yet?
Theists offer no practical solution to the problems of secular morality. They have no objective framework either as far we can tell. Moreover, I’ve never heard a single piece evidence by any Christian apologist that there is an objective moral standard (in the absence of minds). They usually say, if god doesn’t exist… then there is no objective standard… And all their focus goes to showing why that’s the case. But never do they provide evidence for why they believe there is such a standard. Even if god exists, that still doesn’t mean that he/she/it is moral.
When is Dr Marshall going to reply? Lol. I notice he takes much longer than Dr Carrier to give a response. I know people get busy but this is ridiculous IMHO
Just a little info… I contacted Dr Marshall. I know the delay may seem ridiculous if you don’t realize what’s going on. He’s been tied up with major out of state jobs with tight deadlines. He informed me that he expects to have his next response within the week. The work seems to have come unexpected.
Hang in just a little longer!