Download THE MORAL ARGUMENT

Dialogue Education – The Moral Argument
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THE MORAL ARGUMENT
for the existence of God
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Immanuel Kant
----------------Kant did NOT put forward a moral argument and anyone who said he does is wrong!!!! Kant
rejected all attempts to argue from the world to God, he regarded such an exercise as
impossible. However he thought that God was a POSTULATE of practical reason. If you
share Kant’s assumptions, then it becomes necessary to assume that there is a God. Kant’s
reasoning….
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
All human beings desire and seek happiness
All human beings ought to be moral and do their duty
The universe is fair
The Summum Bonum (highest good) represents virtue and happiness
Everyone seeks the summum bonum (from (1) and (2))
What is sought must be achievable because the universe is fair (see (3))
The Summum Bonum is not achievable in this life
So it is necessary to POSTULATE a life after death in which the Summum Bonum
can be achieved
9. AND it is necessary to POSTULATE a God to guarantee fairness.
Note the emphasis on life after death and God as POSTULATES. Kant did not think that
either of these could be proved. What he is claiming is that IF you hold the universe is fair
and IF the Summum Bonum can be achieved then life after death and God are necessary
postulates.
Of course, it may well be that the Universe is not fair – Kant had a deep sense of trust in
the fairness of the Universe and if this is rejected then the postulates are not needed.
Argument from absolute moral values
A different approach to that of Kant comes from those who argue from the existence of
some absolute moral values. Rashdall put forward this argument but it was developed by
Sorley. Sorley claims:
1.
There is an absolute moral law. Sorley supports this claim with the following reasons:
2. People are conscious of an absolute moral law
3. People acknowledge the demands that this law makes on them even if they break it
4. No finite mind grasps the whole of what this represents
5. Ideas exist only in minds
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6. Therefore there must be a supreme mind, beyond all finite minds, in which this
absolute moral law exists.
Sorley claims that unlike Natural Law which is descriptive of human nature, the Moral Law is
prescriptive. It describes not what IS but what SHOULD BE. The Natural Law approach to
Ethics stems from Aristotle and was developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. It is based not on
the claim that there is an absolute moral law but rather on the claim that all human beings
share a common human nature. What is morally right is what causes human beings to fulfil
this nature and actions are morally wrong if they lead us away from what it is to be fully
human.
C.S. Lewis also argued to the existence of God from the claim that there exists absolute
moral laws. His approach is similar to that of Sorley but he develops the argument in rather
more detail.
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THERE MUST BE AN ABSOLUTE MORAL LAW (otherwise disagreements would
not be possible; promise and treaty keeping would be unnecessary; we would not
make excuses for breaking the moral law)
THIS MORAL LAW CANNOT BE HERD INSTINCT (otherwise the strongest
would always win [and it does not]; we would act from instinct and we don’t
[sometimes our instinct is to help someone in trouble to our own cost]; some
instincts would always be right [and patriotism and the love of a mother may be
wrong])
THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE MERE CONVENTION (not everything is a social
convention – e.g. maths; judgements about the moral values of a society only make
sense if the basis of the judgement is independent of society)
THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE A LAW OF NATURE (as the moral law is not a
descriptive ‘is’ but is an ‘ought’, situations which are factually convenient may be
wrong [e.g. betrayal of a friend], to argue that what is moral is what is good for the
whole race, does not explain why I may do something that is against my own
interests)
THE MORAL LAW CANNOT BE MERE IMAGINATION (as we cannot get rid of it
even if we want to, we did not make it, it is impressed on us from outside)
THE MORAL LAW MUST RESIDE IN A MIND (as it is an ‘ought’ not an ‘is’; moral
laws come from minds not from matter, just as an architect is not part of the
building, so the source of the moral law cannot be part of the Universe
THEREFORE THERE MUST BE A MIND WHICH IS THE SOURCE OF MORAL
LAW. (This must be absolute good, since the source of good must be good)
The trouble with both Sorley’s and Lewis’ argument is that they present as an obviously true
assumption something that is highly debatable – namely the existence of an absolute moral
law. Many philosophers and others today maintain that morality is something developed by
human beings to help them to live together and there are no absolutes – morality is relative
to culture. This is to maintain a non-realist approach to morality – namely holding that moral
truths are only true within the society in which one happens to live. Thus in Islam it is
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morally acceptable to have more than one wife whereas in Christianity it is not. The
challenge, therefore, is to sustain the claim that an absolute moral law does, indeed, exist.
The second problem is that even if it is granted that there are absolute morals, one could
take a Platonist position and hold that these are absolute because they participate in the
Forms. According to Plato, when we see instances of beauty, truth or justice these resemble
or participate in the absolute Form of Beauty, Truth and Justice (note that the Forms are
written with a capital letter). The Forms are not created or creative and even Plato’s God,
the Demiurge, is responsible to them. If, therefore, one is a Platonist one could hold that
there are absolute morals but these do not need a god to explain them.
BERTRAND RUSSELL’s disproof of God
Bertrand Russell takes an opposing view to Lewis and Sorley, maintaining that it is possible
to actually use morality to disprove God’s existence. His argument proceeds as follows:
1. If there is a moral law it either stems from God or it does not
2. If the moral law comes from God it is arbitrary (because whatever God commands is
our definition of goodness)
3. If it does not come from God then God is subject to it (this is one horn of the
Euthyphro dilemma)
4. So either God is not essentially good (because he is arbitrary about what is right or
wrong) OR God is subject to an independent moral standard.
5. Neither an arbitrary God nor a less than ultimate God is worthy of worship.
6. Therefore there is no God.
This argument refers to Plato’s EUTHYPHRO (the title of a book setting out a dialogue
between Socrates and a young man, Euthyphro). This dilemma is due to there being two
possibilities
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Either there is a standard of morality independent of God (as Plato maintained
was the case with the Forms) and in this case God is subject to this moral
standard and is not the author of it,
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Or God is the only standard of morality – in which case whatever God wants is
good just because God wants it.
Russell is maintaining that the latter position is true and, therefore, any morality that
stems from God depends on God’s arbitrary will. As such, Russell concludes, there cannot be
a God worthy of worship. Russell concludes that if the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma
is true then as God is not ultimate, god is not worthy of worship whereas if the second horn
of the dilemma is true, then god is arbitrary. Both alternatives arrive, Russell considers, at
a god who is not worth worshipping.
Camus: Theism is opposed to humanism
‘The Plague’ deals with the reaction by a Jesuit priest and a doctor to the plague in Oran….
Camus claims:
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Either one must join the doctor and fight the plague or join the priest and not fight
the plague.
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Not to join the doctor and fight the plague would be anti-humanitarian
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To fight the plague is to fight against the God who sent it.
Therefore, if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong.
Camus is claiming that fighting the plague is to fight against the will of God. This, however,
does not take into account the idea that God creates a universe subject to natural laws and
that overcoming the challenges provided by these natural laws is a way of human beings
developing into creatures of love and compassion. No theologian would consider that it was
against the will of God to fight illness and plague and, of course, in Christianity Jesus
himself healed people from disease and clearly did not think that being in a state of
suffering was ‘a good thing’ sent by God which one should not oppose.
This is not a very convincing argument, as any theologian and most priests would say that to
fight against disease and plague would be to take the side of the God who is love
personified. In the Thomist system, anything that fulfils its nature is good - so a perfectly
good seagull, swallow or owl is perfectly whatever it is to fulfil the nature of a seagull,
swallow or owl. In this system, a good plague virus would fulfil the nature of a plague virus however it would still be good for human beings to prolong their lives even if by so doing
they killed the virus. On any view, therefore, Camus’ argument is not philosophically
convincing (although, of course, it could still be asked why a wholly good and all powerful God
should have designed a world in which plague, AIDS and other viruses exist - but that is a
separate issue!).
Newman and the argument from conscience
-----------------------------------------------Newman was one of the most influential theologians in the 19th Century. He was a very
influential Anglican initially and converted to Catholicism in mid-life - eventually becoming a
Cardinal in the Catholic Church. Newman puts forward a different version of the moral
argument - it is an argument from conscience.
John Henry Newman (1801 - 1890) is concerned with conscience as representing the sense
of personal responsibility human beings have to God. Newman considered that God implants
a conscience in human beings but that human parents and society place the contents of the
conscience in individuals. It is, therefore, the faculty of conscience that points to God Newman considered that human beings feel ashamed, are responsible and feel guilty and
this means that there must be some being or person before whom human beings are
ashamed, feel responsible or are guilty. Thus for Newman the faculty of conscience points
to the existence of God. Conscience, for Newman, thus presents a form of moral argument
for the existence of God.
Newman’s starting point for human conscience is not human beings, but God:
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“He has the attributes of justice, truth, wisdom... and mercy, as eternal characteristics in
his nature, the very law of his being, identical with himself.... when he became Creator, he
implanted this law, which is himself, in the intelligence of all rational creatures. The divine
law, then, is the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong, a sovereign,
irreversible, absolute authority..... This law, as appreciated in the minds of individual men, is
called ‘conscience’ ... hence it is never lawful to go against our conscience; and the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 said that he who acts against his conscience loses his soul." 1
Unlike Sorley and Lewis, therefore, Newman does not argue from an absolute morality.
Instead he maintains that the faculty of conscience is what distinguishes human beings
from animals and because we feel ashamed and are guilty when we do something wrong, this
implies there must be One before whom we are ashamed and guilty.
Freud
----The influence of Freud has led to a dismissal by some of the whole idea of conscience on the
basis of its perceived links with feelings of guilt which are considered to be unhealthy.
Freud says:
"The long period of childhood during which the growing human being lives in dependence on
his parents leaves behind it a precipitate, which forms within his ego a special agency in
which this parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of ‘super-ego’. The
parents’ influence naturally includes not only the personalities of the parents themselves
but also the racial, national and family traditions handed on through them, as well as the
demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent." 2
Conscience, then, may be argued to be little more than the inherited traditions of the
community and family in which one is brought up and which lives in one’s super-ego for the
rest of one’s life. This, naturally, undermines any claim that there is a connection between
God and human conscience.
1
J.H.Newman ‘Difficulties of Anglicans’ Vol. 2, London 1891 pp. 246-7
2
Sigmund Freud. Trans Strachey ‘An outline of Psychoanalysis’. Hogarth Press: 1949 pps. 3-4