Download 06 Moral argument

The Moral Argument
Is goodness without God good enough?
A Cautionary Note
• The argument is NOT that knowledge of God is required
to be good.
– People could breath long before scientists knew about air.
– Romans 2:15
• They [Gentiles] show that the requirements of the law are written
on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their
thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even
defending them.
• Neither is the argument about what our moral duties are
or how we can know about them.
Moral Argument
•
Premises:
1. If God does not exist then objective moral values and
duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist
Therefore, God exists.
Values and Duties
• Values have to do with whether something is
Good or Bad
• Duties have to do with whether something is
Right or Wrong
Objective and Subjective
• Objective is independent of people’s opinions
• Subjective is dependent on people’s opinions
e.g.
– The Holocaust was objectively wrong even though the
Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right.
Objective moral values require God
• Traditionally Moral values have been based in
God
• In the absence of God why think humans have
moral worth?
• On Naturalism moral values seem to be just the
by-product of biological evolution and social
conditioning.
• To think that human beings are special and our
morality objectively true is speciesism
Objective Moral Duties
• Traditionally moral duties come from God
– e.g. The 10 Commandments
• On atheism human beings are just animals and
animals have no moral obligations to each other.
• Certain actions such as rape may not be
biologically and socially advantageous and
become taboo but there is nothing to show they
are really wrong.
Atheistic Misunderstandings
• We are not saying that all atheists are immoral.
• We are not saying that atheists can’t recognise
moral values and duties.
• Given that atheists can recognise human value
we are not say that they can not work out an
ethical code of conduct.
• Belief in God is not necessary for objective
morality; God is.
Euthyphro Dilemma
Is something good because God wills it?
Or does God will something because it is good?
• If you say that something is good because God
wills it, then what is good becomes arbitrary.
– God could have willed that torture be good
• But if you say that God wills something because
it is good, then what is good or bad is
independent of God.
– So what need then for God as the basis for morality?
Answer to Euthyphro
• It is a false dilemma as there is a third
alternative, namely, God wills something
because He is good.
• God’s own nature is the standard of goodness
and his commands the expression of his nature.
• It would be contrary to God’s nature to make
commands that would harm the creation that he
loves.
Atheistic Moral Platonism
• Plato believed in a realm of non-physical entities
that were self existent.
– “The Good” was just one of these entities.
• Some atheists say that moral values like: Justice,
Mercy, Love, etc., just exist
Response to Moral Platonism
• Moral values seem to be properties of persons, and it’s
hard to understand how something like ‘justice’ can exist
as an abstraction.
• The view provides no basis for moral duties.
– Even if justice exists why are we obligated to be just?
• If moral values exist then why wouldn’t their counter
parts, hatred , greed & selfishness exist too.
– Why wouldn’t we be obligated to align our lives to these objects
instead?
• Why would evolution produce creatures that would
correspond to these moral platonic objects
Human Flourishing
• Good is whatever contributes to Human Flourishing.
• Arbitrary: Why are facts that contribute to Human
flourishing more valuable than similar facts for ants or
mice
• Implausibility: Atheists will sometimes say that moral
properties attach themselves to a natural state of affairs.
e.g. the property of badness necessarily attaches to a man beating
his wife. Or the property of goodness to a mother nursing her infant
• Why think these strange non-natural properties like
‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ even exist, much less attach
themselves to certain states of affairs.
Objective moral values and duties exist
• Moral Experience: We trust our five senses and cognitive
faculties to tell us the truth about the external world. We
should trust that our moral cognitive faculties tell us the
truth about reality.
• Persons who fail to see that it is true that some things are
right/wrong are just as handicapped as people who are
blind.
• Do correctly functioning humans really think that actions
like the Hindu practice of suttee (burning widows alive
on the funeral pyres of their husbands) is morally
neutral?
Sociobiological Objections
• Do we have a reason to doubt our moral experience?
1) Morality is just an illusion created by evolution so we can’t
trust it.
2) Even if morality is real what are the chances that evolution
gave us the ability to determine what they are?
Response to Sociobiological Objections
1)
• Genetic fallacy: you can’t show a true claim is false by
demonstrating how the belief came about.
• So applied to the evolution of moral beliefs we can’t us it
to defeat moral truth claims.
2)
• Begs the question by assuming atheism is true.
– If God exists then he can plan/guide evolution to ensure our
moral reasoning abilities are reliable.
• Would be self defeating as all or cognitive faculties come
about from evolution
Conclusion
• We have given reasons to accept both premises and the
conclusion follows that there is a personal entity that
provides a basis for morality
• While the cosmological arguments are good the moral
argument resonates with most people. It isn’t shrouded
in complex science and we are confronted with moral
choices on a daily basis.
• The moral argument puts flesh and bones on the ‘first
cause’ and ‘designer’. This entity now begins to appear as
the kind of God who would care about his creation and
provide a method of our salvation.