Defense Against the Dark Arts: The Moral Argument

The Moral Argument

     The moral argument is another common argument for god you are likely to come across in your conversations with the faithful. The argument was made popular by 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his treatise "Critique of Practical Reason". Kant argued that the existence of god was a necessary assumption one would need to make in order to understand morality.

The moral argument takes many forms but it usually looks something like this

1. If God does not exist, objective morality does not exist.
2. Objective morality does exists.
3. Therefore, God exists.

     There are a few philosophical stumbling blocks contained in this argument that should be explained before I go into the content of the argument itself, mainly "Objectivity" and "Subjectivity".

Objectivity

     Objectivity as used here means being true outside of a subject's individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginations.

Example: The mass of the earth is 5.97219 × 10^24 kilograms.

This is an objective fact. It is true independent of any individuals opinions of it.

Subjectivity

Subjectivity means relating to the perceptions, experiences, interpretations, feelings, and beliefs of a subject.

Example: Vanilla ice cream is the most delicious ice cream. 

     This is a subjective statement. The truth or falsity of the statement is relative to the opinion of person evaluating it. If you like vanilla then you agree with the statement, however, If you prefer chocolate ... well screw you.

     Now, it can get even more fuzzy because you can have objective facts about subjective statements. "Vanilla ice cream is the most delicious ice cream." is a subjective statement but the fact that "Adam thinks vanilla ice cream is the most delicious ice cream" is an objective fact.

... Hope I didn't butcher Objective/Subjective and hope I didn't confuse you, or myself. on to the moral argument.

Problems

     My main problem with this argument is the first premise. This is because I accept premise 2 (depending on the definitions of objective and morally good or bad), but that is a whole post on it's own that I plan to do later on. For this post I mean to focus on why this argument is not sufficient to demonstrate the existence of any god or gods.

If God does not exist, objective morals do not exist.

1: What do we mean when we use the word moral?

     Morality deals with the distinction between good and bad or right and wrong. A big difference between theists and atheists on the subject of morality is the definition of the words good and bad. Premise 1 fails because it becomes irrelevant or circular when morality is defined in any religious terms.  

     

   Some define good and bad in this way

Good is what god tells us to do.

Bad is what god tells us not to do.

     This is known as Divine Command Theory. Lets substitute this definition into the 1st premise.

If God does not exist, Divine Commands do not exist.

      Of course it is true if a command exists then the one who gave the command is implied. This pushes the objection to the 2nd premise because I reject that this morality as defined under Divine Command Theory exists. More over I am willing to bet that most believers, when pressed, reject this as a definition of morality as well.

Enter The Euthyphro dilemma

     The Euthyphro dilemma was put forth by Socrates in Plato's book "Euthyphro" and it exposes the problem with attributing morality to a god. It was originally used to demonstrate piety but is easily adapted to morality. It goes like this:

Is that which is good commanded by the gods because it's good, 

or is it good because the gods command it?

Neither answer is satisfying.

Good is commanded by god because it's good

     This reduces god to a messenger, a middle man who is telling us what is good and bad. This means god is irrelevant and not the source of morality thus defeating the argument that he is required for morality to exist.

Good is good because god commanded it. 

     In this case god could command slavery, rape, or murder and it would become good by definition. Prepare yourself for the inevitable "But God would never do that" response. Check out some of the crazy stuff the god of the bible has commanded over the years.

www.evilbible.com

truth-saves.com

     In this scenario morality becomes truly arbitrary and subjective, god would then be the source of it but it would by no means be objective.

"The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good." - Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian)

The usual response to the Euthyphro dilemma is to try to create a 3rd option.

"Neither, instead good is good because it reflects gods character or nature"

This changes the definitions of good and bad slightly

Good is what reflects god's nature
Bad is what conflicts with god's nature

This only changes the terms of the dilemma and further damages the argument.

Is god's nature the way it is because it is good or 
is god's nature good merely because it is god's nature?


God's nature is good merely because it is god's nature.

     This leads us right back into the arbitrary definition of good. Gods nature could be any way at all and that would be good by definition. This is further confounded when you ask "Did god have any choice in his nature?" if he did then you have the exact situation as before where god simply subjectively defined morality. On the other hand if he is not the source of his own nature then neither is he the source of morality

God's nature is the way it is because that way is good.
This is plainly circular. just ask "why?"

Why is what is good morally better than what is bad?
Because what is good reflects god's nature and what is bad doesn't
Why does god's nature reflect what is good instead of what is bad
Because what is good is morally better than what is bad
...Rinse and Repeat

2: Which god?

     Again even if this argument was successful it would only argue for a generic deistic god or even aliens that are sufficiently more advanced than us. There is nothing in it that would point towards any particular religious tradition.

All in all I find there is no way to define morality in a religious way without assuming what it is you are trying to prove. If you want my definition of good and bad please check back when I post my treatise on morality... might be a while, I want to do a bit more research and thinking on it before I post. In the mean time check out these links and videos to learn more.

ironchariots.org

This guy is brilliant... 

but he pronounces "Euthyphro" weird

Morality 1: Good without gods 

Morality 2: Not-so-good books

Morality 3: Objectivity and oughtness

Thank you for reading and I welcome any comments or corrections especially on this subject as I am a bit of a newb here. 

-Adam