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 closing up Dr. Marshall’s “Moral Argument” for the existence of God. Here Marshall makes his last response to my latest reply. I shall follow with my closing argument on this question.

And that will conclude our debate series for now. We both like the idea resuming where we left off, possibly early next year, tackling the last couple of remaining arguments and maybe even writing closing statements. But no guarantee.

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That the Evidence Points to God (XIII)

by Wallace Marshall, Ph.D.

I have argued that Dr. Carrier’s moral-constructivist theory of objective morality faces two challenges. First, it must show that its idealized group would, through consideration of consequences alone, settle on the fundamental moral convictions we hold dear, particularly a universalized Golden Rule (UGR). Second, it must be able to secure obligation from individual persons in a way that is faithful to our moral experience. 

In addressing the first challenge, Dr. Carrier proposes that rational, well informed (atheist) persons would settle on the UGR because (1) game-theoretic modeling shows that such a rule produces the best outcome for all actors; and (2) it’s more psychologically fulfilling for them to live by the UGR. He seeks to prove (2) by pointing to research that the experience of this psychological reward is the primary motivator of Golden-Rule behavior; and he suggests that this reward derives from the recognition that people would rather be around others who observe a UGR. 

As stated in my last reply, the theist will of course agree that it’s more fulfilling to live by the UGR, and theism can ground this sense of fulfillment in the ultimate structure of reality. On atheism, however, the Golden Rule likely originated as an emotive state “invented” by evolution to secure cooperative behavior and enable certain tribes to survive, reproduce, and conquer tribes deficient in this impulse, not to benefit “all actors” universally. 

The idealized group might thus agree with Carrier that all moral intuition is “unreliable.” It would realize that the blank authority of moral imperatives we encounter in our experience (and that obviously contribute heavily to our psychological satisfaction) was “intended” to give an evolutionary edge by circumventing consequential deliberations that, especially where long-term goals are concerned, would be prone to error.

The idealized group could thus not, as I have said, uncritically privilege its UGR impulse but would have to consider whether it was an exaggeration that has outlived its evolutionary usefulness, or perhaps was never useful to begin with. 

We can easily imagine the group deciding against a UGR in favor of a limited Golden Rule (LGR) favoring the flourishing of the “highest types” of humanity. They might notice that despite people’s stated allegiance to a UGR, few actually live by it. They might suspect UGR beliefs are due to misguided social or religious conditioning. They might further think, as Dr. Carrier does, that much of the world’s misery is due to biologically based cognitive deficiencies, and thus conclude that the world would be a better place if they could reduce the population of such persons. 

As Carrier notes, they would have to consider the dismal fate of the Nazis. But again, we can easily imagine the group attributing Nazism’s failure to a combination of accidents of history, choosing the wrong targets (namely the most cognitively advanced group in the world) [1], its violent and extreme nature, etc., and thus proposing a more “benign” version.

So when we take away, as atheism does, Carrier’s lynchpins of psychological satisfaction and a prior commitment to securing the best outcomes for all humans universally, it is by no means clear that his idealized group would settle on the UGR we hold dear. 

Turning to the second hurdle, Carrier approaches my side in conceding that notions of “ought,” “transgression,” “moral outrage” and “guilt” are essential components of any workable moral theory. His statement that only “ignorant or irrational” people endorse retributivism is as ludicrous as it is condescending, as anyone who peruses a respectable academic journal like Law and Philosophy will discover. [2]

No one who reads the lucid C.S. Lewis essays I referenced in my prior reply will think retributivism so easily dismissed. One of the merits of retributivism is that it is able to consider consequences in determining punishments; it merely insists that consideration of consequences are subordinate to the deserts of a crime; whereas consequentialism, by contrast, severs this critical link between offense and desert, opening the door to a host of pernicious possibilities.

But I don’t wish to get sidetracked into a discussion of punishment theory. All that is necessary is some notion of desert, regardless of what the government’s justification for punishment is going to be. 

Now Dr. Carrier thinks he can fit the first four terms, and perhaps desert also, into his “consequences are all” moral theory. His attempt to explain this is too confused for me to dissect and reply to in a short space, so I must simply reiterate the obvious point that these terms are not primarily used and experienced by moral agents in a consequentialist fashion. When someone says, “It is evil for you to steal from the poor!” (transgression), it is a different thing from the prudential counsel, “If you steal from the poor, there will be be bad outcomes for you and others.” Even very young children are able to distinguish moral norms from prudential norms. [3] Moral outrage is an entirely different sentiment from, “I feel sorry for you, you have miscalculated.” Guilt is a different thing from fear of consequences. “He got what he deserved” is different from, “These are the consequences of erroneous calculations.”  

Carrier continues to appeal to the large role consequences play in moral motivation. No one denies this, but any attempt to reformulate moral expressions in consequentialist terms such as I have outlined above will be felt as utterly inadequate expressions of the underlying sentiments. Carrier has been unable to answer Joyce’s challenge to produce a single instance of a culture that “employs only hypothetical imperatives as its principal normative framework.” 

Nor can such consequentialist reasoning secure obligation from individual persons. Carrier insists that Jacques the Art Thief really will be happier if he decides to abandon his plans for the heist, but given Jacques’ desires and calculations, it is hard to see why—on atheism. One could invent numerous similar instances, for example, a longtime gang member who’s “too far gone” to change his path and may even die if he attempts to do so.  

So Dr. Carrier has been unable to maintain the second premise of the Moral Argument (“Objective moral values and duties exist”) while denying the first (“If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist”). 

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Such is Dr. Marshall’s last reply on the Moral Argument for God. 

Continue on to my closing answer.

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[1] Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ in the world. For discussion, see Steven Pinker, “Group and Genes,” The New Republic (26 June 2006); and Richard Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa, “How to explain high Jewish achievement: The role of intelligence and values,” Personality and Individual Differences 44 (2008): 801-808.

[2] Anyone who studies punishment theory will find that plenty of legal theorists are retributivists. See, for example, Mitchell Berman, “Rehabilitating Retributivism,” Law and Philosophy 32 (2013): 83–108 (PDF is accessible here), or other retributivists discussed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on retributivism.

[3] Marie Tisak and Elliot Turiel, “Children’s Conceptions of Moral and Prudential Rules,” Child Development 55 (1984): 1030-39.