The Moral Argument

[Poison Tree]

Wouldn't, by definitions, objective morals not be dependent on the existence of a god because, if they were so dependent, they would not be objective but simply subjective to/on god?

[josephpalazzo]

Wouldn't, by definitions, objective morals not be dependent on the existence of a god because, if they were so dependent, they would not be objective but simply subjective to/on god?

The whole debate of objective versus subjective has been going around for centuries. Good luck on defining objective morals.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

It goes back to being a litter bug. God is the ultimate litter bug evidently.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The moral argument for God is, I think, the simplest argument that the theist puts out, yet problematic to refute.

I think it's the easiest to refute.  There can be no absolute morality if the god is Abrahamic, because that god's own moral judgements change nature and character through the holy texts -- the OT vs NT god is the clearest example.  That means that morality is relative, even given a Christian god.

As well, there can be no objective morality given an Abrahamic god, because he engages in wholesale slaughter even as he condemns killing; that means that morality is subjective, as well as relative.

The premises are so clearly wrong that one need not point out that on the whole, Christians are equally as immoral as other believers, and perhaps less so than nonbelievers, if one accepts the few studies done on incarcerated convicts.

[St Giordano Bruno]

Religious leaders did not invent ethics. If anything their history is replete with violating them such a racial intolerance for example.

[vincent]

url=http://www.atheistforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=997782#p997782]aitm[/url]"]

If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist

implies causation, but cannot support it, technically does not even imply causation but equitable existence.

Can you define "equitable existence"?

url=http://www.atheistforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=997782#p997782]aitm[/url]"]
God violates his moral values, therefore he cannot be moral. If God cannot be moral he cannot cause moral values.

The moral argument makes no mention of any specific God, so it would be wrong to say that God violates his moral values. This would only apply to the God of the Bible, Koran etc.

url=http://www.atheistforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=997782#p997782]aitm[/url]"]Morals exist outside of God.

Can you talk a little more about how these morals do exist? Like where do they exist?

[vincent]

url=http://www.atheistforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=997785#p997785]Poison Tree[/url]"]Wouldn't, by definitions, objective morals not be dependent on the existence of a god because, if they were so dependent, they would not be objective but simply subjective to/on god?

Objective moral values were defined here.

Are you denying premise two, "objective moral values do not exist" or are you denying premise one, "it is possible for objective moral values to exist due to something other than God"?

[vincent]

url=http://www.atheistforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=997808#p997808]Thumpalumpacus[/url]"]

The moral argument for God is, I think, the simplest argument that the theist puts out, yet problematic to refute.

I think it's the easiest to refute.  There can be no absolute morality if the god is Abrahamic, because that god's own moral judgements change nature and character through the holy texts -- the OT vs NT god is the clearest example.  That means that morality is relative, even given a Christian god.

As well, there can be no objective morality given an Abrahamic god, because he engages in wholesale slaughter even as he condemns killing; that means that morality is subjective, as well as relative.

The premises are so clearly wrong that one need not point out that on the whole, Christians are equally as immoral as other believers, and perhaps less so than nonbelievers, if one accepts the few studies done on incarcerated convicts.

I can see why you think that it is the easiest to refute. You are refuting everything except the argument on the table.

The argument we are talking about has nothing to say about "absolute morality", the Abrahamic god, holy texts -- the OT vs NT, Christians being equally immoral as other believers, or studies done on incarcerated convicts.

I would welcome your input on the actual argument that we are talking about, for starters which of the two premises do you deny and why?

[vincent]

Religious leaders did not invent ethics. If anything their history is replete with violating them such a racial intolerance for example.

This may very well be true, but has nothing to do with what we are talking about.

But based on what you have said, I would conclude that you are affirming the second premise. You are saying that ethics do exist in some objective way, that racial intolerance is really wrong. Can you talk a little more about how ethics exist in this universe, what makes racial intolerance objectively wrong?

[SGOS]

The moral argument makes no mention of any specific God

I refers to the god of the arguer.  Without a believer to advance the argument,  you can replace the word "God" with "Unicorn" or "Celestial Teapot" and it becomes equally valid.

Go ahead!  Try it.  That's because the argument arbitrarily sets up the outcome in the first premise.  That's probably true of all arguments that are circular in nature.

[GSOgymrat]

The moral argument for God is, I think, the simplest argument that the theist puts out, yet problematic to refute. This is the version defended by William Lane Craig.

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

[/i]

The argument is logically valid; so if you want to deny the conclusion, you must reject one of the two premisses. So which one do you deny?

Premise 1 is wrong.

1. If unicorns do not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, unicorns exist.

Also using the definition you cited:

To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them.

I agree that premise 2 is correct. Humans life is valuable because we are humans ourselves and we are empathetic, social creatures with many commonalities yet unique individual properties. The truth is that the only rational basis for morality is a concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings. This emphasis on the happiness and suffering of others explains why we don't have moral obligations toward rocks. This also explains why killing large numbers of individuals is wrong no matter who is writing the narrative.

Let me also say that I believe these logical proofs both for and against the existence of God are reductionistic, pointless and are used by people not in a sincere exploration of truth but as weapons to defend their own bias. People do not believe or not believe in gods because of logic, they use logic to support a their existing belief system.

PS. I realize that SGOS was typing the same thing I was after I posted this!

[SGOS]

PS. I realize that SGOS was typing the same thing I was after I posted this!

I was aiming in the same general direction.  

The more this thing gets dissected, the more it appears to be rubbish.  I mean actual rubbish, as opposed to a syllogism with just one obvious flaw.  

I don't think Vincent came up with this on his own.  It has a familiar ring, like something that has been floating around theistic forums, or it's a variation of some well known historical argument previously debunked.

It attempts to gain an illusion of credibility by adopting the simplicity of a classical three statement syllogism, as if that's all it takes to construct a logical argument.  Then it fills the basic framework of it's structure with assumptions passed off as sequitur, and at the end, it arrives somewhere back near the beginning.

It's like magic words that are supposed to do something.  All you have to do is believe that it actually does do something, and it suddenly becomes a logical argument that is supposed to be "problematic for atheists."

In fact, it is problematic, because it's flawed in so many ways that it's hard to decide where to begin.  It's also problematic in that no one can explain flawed logic to a believer.  In their ecstasy, they are paying attention to the "magic", rather than the thought process.

[Corporal Cross]

There is no debate in this argument, not any more so than that you are free to debate your nature. It is not my intent to insult atheists, not even with the rather harsh welcome I received here, but truly, do you people listen to yourselves?

Atheists supposedly pursue knowledge over religious flights of fancy, and yet I see so little evidence of it at times. You are humans, this is a fact. Your ancestors were primates, most likely, and you follow the same patterns of social behavior, assuming anyone believes Goodall's research or Dawkins or Darwin. And yet somehow you fail to see how that is relevant to your war against religion, or your supposed movement for freedom from it, and everything in between.

Like it or not, you have a purpose. Maybe it is divine and maybe it isn't, but only one option is available to you. You have to reproduce, else go extinct, and extinction isn't an option in the truest sense. Not in the sense of atheism being a cause or belief system. Still, you are getting your asses handed to you by organized religion. Why? Well, why do other primates follow an ordered social structure? Why is the 90-10 rule of human society a thing?

Believe me, I'm a libertarian, there is nothing I would like to see more than a truly free society with truly free markets, both proprietary and intellectual, but I am also not one to follow religious nonsense, despite being a Christian. The natural order of things is for people to fall in line according to a mutual set of ideals, save in the case of war, but your war has no common ideals. You've already lost, though you don't know it yet. There's an entire religion that constitutes a fifth of the world's populace whose marching mantra is that you will become Islamic, one way or another. If you don't believe in Allah, you will believe in pain, and since that worked for most of Islam's history, it will work again.

This is the problem I have with atheists. You declare for nothing. You're an unknown quantity, and that typically doesn't work well for longstanding societal structures. Is there an atheist majority in any country? A country with atheism as the primary belief? No? Then shut up. What you perceive as a movement towards freedom is actually enslaving you to more religious dogma. If it isn't Christians inviting you to join the faith it will be Muslims or possibly less kindly extremists from any religion.

You're at war, humans, and you have been since your chromosomes first fought for primacy. That's natural law. I swear to God, I'm religious and I'm still more atheist than a lot of you. I don't care if you think there is a god or you think there isn't, you'd better follow one if you want to get anywhere in this world. People need a sense of moral authority as much as they need safety, and sadly, most of you look in the wrong place for it. To so many here, the state is the answer to religion, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The state is goddamned religion, and it doesn't ask for tithes kindly. It will not save you from religion any more than it will save markets. It never has, never will, and those of you who believe the hypocritical BS that a centralized government with the "right" ideals will save your freedom to think freely are sadly mistaken. Again, there is no example of that ever working.

By contrast, Martin Luther created the most powerful religion in the world by working human rights into religion. The vast majority of Christians are barely religious, but when threatened they become a formidable force. People may mock the religious right, but it certainly isn't going anywhere. Or is that not what you people bitch about constantly?  That's what you get for being so short-sighted and anti-dogmatic. All you have done is make enemies of the faithful.

The one defense you have is science, and you do a remarkably poor job of utilizing it. Religion is no longer the anti-fossil group of miracle-worshippers that once was. It never was. It was always a social group, and like any, it has co-evolved. All you have done is make religion plus science. Sure, a few holdouts still think the world was created in seven days, but most of them do not take the Bible literally. In truth, they take the good parts and leave out that which confuses them. In that way, they are exactly like you, since I doubt there is a person here who can calculate the delta-v required to get a 100-ton rocket from here to Mars, much less explain cosmic phenomena. You're all just people looking for answers, and also people looking to sabotage other people. To you, religion is a plague of misunderstanding, but misunderstanding is the rule of human psychology, if the results are any evidence. Indeed, if you know anything about genes.

Atheism is the rebellious youth of sociology. Time and necessity will break you, you will see. You are not the first to imagine that there is not a God, nor the last, but one way or another there is a God you must bow to. Call it theism, call it money, call it social Darwinism, call it what you wish, you are subject to it. You know this is true. It has always been true, since the dawn of man.  

Personally, I subscribe to the Christian definition. I forgive my enemies and treat the least of us as I would myself. My belief in Christ is ultimately immaterial, by the atheist definition, but it means everything in reality. You may not believe it, but daughters have been grounded for not winning me first. I make no claim to be the perfect man, far from it, I say as much, and yet there it is. A God-fearing man with the proper morals is every decent parent's dream. I have no more to offer than any man.  I am a Marine. A warfighter by another name. My civilian job is lackluster. I drive trains. And still, I am some kind of holy grail when it comes to women. Why? Because I can fight, presumably, and because I can provide for them. Being on good terms with the parents only greases the wheels, and quite frankly, it is a reward in and of itself. To kneel beside them and pray as a member of their family is all I could ever ask for. I have no wife, as of yet, but neither have I bitter girlfriends or parents that hate me.

That's reality, that's the thousands of years' worth of genetic engineering atheists are content to ignore due to philosophy. Communism looked good on paper, too, and look where that ended up.  People will always look for a sense of higher order, or invent one. To deny a God is to deny humanity, little, simple machines. You are made to be equally cooperative and combative, the same as your genes. A sense of rebellion is healthy, but it means little by itself. The Christians remain, in the face of doubt, and they have shiny banners, a cool cross symbol, and much of the world's wealth.

Surely, you people know this. Is it not the reason for your angst? Is it not the reason for all angst? Some oppressive entity quashing your desire to believe in what you wish? Has it not occurred to you that you are oppressing yourselves by your malcontent? I could complain all day about driving trains, blame it on the bourgeois, but at least that has some substance. You are a rebellion alone, defined by your inability to accept the human nature you hold in the face of religion.

I rest my case, and cast my vote for both. Get back to me when a successful society demonstrates neither.

[Plu]

Is there an atheist majority in any country?

While it's kinda hard to measure, overall in the EU only about 50% of people believe there is a god, with 6 countries dipping under 30% of people who believe this. France has 40% of its respondants claiming to not believe in any spirit/life force/god.

And these numbers are in an upward trend, too. Unfortunately I don't have demographics, but younger generations are more and more rejecting religion. So maybe instead of ranting and telling us to shut up, you should look at the outside world a bit before you make your claims. There are many countries in the world where religion is considered unimportant and where large parts of the population do not believe in any gods.

It pretty much makes the rest of your post worthless, too. You clearly didn't bother to look around at the rest of the world before you came up with this narrow-minded personal anecdote.

[SGOS]

Here's some other things I find interesting about the argument:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Number 1 is obfuscation.  It sets up the syllogism as if disproving God, a logical impossibility, is somehow going to be relevant to the argument.  But its just a logical impossibility, especially when Vincent claims later that the statement is not identifying a specific god.  Why is a logical impossibility introduced in a logical argument?  It's beginning to sound a bit fishy.

It also throws a second condition, also a negative that is logically impossible to prove... that "objective moral values would not exist without a god."  Says who?  And I am also perplexed why this questionable hypothetical is added to the first premise as if it is relevant.  Usually, the first premise is much simpler and easily seen as self evident.

So right out of the gate, we are off to a questionable start.  It begins by addressing a hypothetical situation that is logically impossible, but also a beloved canard of theism (Prove God does not exist... Gotcha!), while at the same time, it implies that the second part of the premise, also a negative and logically impossible to prove, would be the case.  At this point, the towel should probably thrown in, but we go on:

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

Presto!  The implication is suddenly an opposite assertion which I guess is supposed to be self evident.  Why is this repeated from the first premise?  Does something implied become true when it is repeated a second time as an opposite assertion?  Come now!

Usually, at this point in a syllogism, we should be moving forward with the argument, not simply repeating a caveat from the first premise, although granted, it's not an exact repetition.  Rather it turns the implication upside down in a sort of bait and switch conditional on the logical impossibility that a god does not exist, and then claims the opposite.  Where the Hell are we going here?

3. Therefore, God exists.

Ah Ha!  Should have seen this coming.  It was suggested in the first premise this would be the outcome.  And somehow this is the outcome.  Well whatdayano!  We could have dispensed with the second assertion of the first premise and the whole assertion of the second premise  neither of which is neither verifiable or helpful, other than as a sort of filler.

Basically:  

1.  You can't prove A god doesn't exist.  
2.  Bla bla bla
3.  Therefore, MY God must exist.