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IS GOD JUST?

8/18/2020

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[Another summer re-run published at Debunking Christianity.]

We nonbelievers claim that a perfectly good, loving being would never have created hell, but according to most Christians we are simply wrong. God is loving, they say, but he is also just — and justice demands that evil-doers be punished. Without hell, after all, where would the Hitlers, Stalins, and Ted Bundys of this world end up? In heaven?

This is a common argument, which means that many must find it persuasive, but my guess is that those who do simply haven't given it sufficient thought. It's very easy to see the flaws in it.

To begin with, hell isn't only for serious evil-doers: standard Christian doctrine maintains that we are all deserving of eternal punishment and that anyone who doesn't accept God's offer of salvation ends up there. A second thing to keep in mind is that even the worst evil-doers aren't necessarily sent to hell — not if at some point they become sincere believers. Ted Bundy, for instance, claimed to have accepted Jesus before being executed, and if that's true then on the standard view he did end up in heaven.

One therefore cannot justify hell on the grounds that evil-doers must be punished. But more importantly, can one still maintain that God is just given this doctrine? Does it make sense that all of us are deserving of eternal punishment, or that those who accept Jesus are forgiven?

Let's begin with why everyone supposedly merits eternal damnation. One common reason offered for this is that God, due to his moral perfection, has standards that are so high that no one is good enough to meet them. Even if you are a saint, you aren't perfect: at the very least, you've probably told a few white lies. And that, the argument goes, makes you bad enough, in God's eyes, to merit the worst form of punishment.

But now consider an analogy. Suppose a father finds out his teenage daughter lied about when she returned home from a party: she said she was back by 10 (as she was supposed to have been) even though she didn't actually make it home until 10:15. By the above logic, if this father punished her by chaining her to the basement wall for a week and giving her a hundred lashes a day with a belt, that would show that he has very high moral standards. His standards still wouldn't be as high as God's, of course, for the Lord demands far worse punishment for the girl, but they would nevertheless be much loftier than those of the majority of parents out there.

As to the second question — whether those who accept Jesus's offer of salvation deserve to be forgiven — consider that while Bundy is experiencing eternal bliss, any non-Christian who spent her entire life helping others and doing nothing but good deeds still goes to hell. All I can say is that if you think that's right, you have a very bizarre sense of justice.

The heinousness of this entire doctrine is somewhat mitigated by the (nowadays rather common) claim that hell isn't as terrible as advertised. Maybe it just means annihilation. Or perhaps it means spending eternity apart from God (which, however, is still supposed to be a very undesirable thing). But no matter what one says about it, the basic idea remains entirely unfair. Believing in Christianity — or in Islam, or any other dogma — does not make one the slightest bit more ethical than not believing, and thus cannot be a sound basis for distinguishing those who merit forgiveness from those who do not.


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TRUMP VS. JESUS

2/7/2020

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In case you missed this, Trump specifically disagreed with Jesus — and did so during the annual National Prayer Breakfast!

That event's keynote speaker, Harvard's Arthur Brooks, argued for more unity in our politically divided country, saying that we need to go beyond mere tolerance and actually “love our enemies.” Which is, of course, something Jesus said. Trump, however, who immediately followed Brooks as speaker, began his talk by saying “Arthur, I don't know if I agree with you.”

This is the same guy who said that he has never asked for God's forgiveness — who in fact said that he doesn't “like to have to ask for forgiveness,” adding that he is “good” anyway.

And still evangelicals love him.

And not as an enemy.

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[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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METAETHICS FOR ATHEISTS

1/10/2020

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There's a lot of confusion out there about metaethics. Case in point: I recently ran a promotion of my book Atheism: Q & A, and as a result received a one-star review on Amazon, apparently for no other reason than that the reviewer does not understand what I mean when I claim that morality is subjective. The review makes it clear he sees me as a relativist, for he objects to my position by pointing out that (contrary to what I supposedly imply) slavery is always wrong.

Part of the reason for that misunderstanding may be because many atheists do in fact espouse the kind of relativist view that my critic finds objectionable. But the main problem is the over-simplification that is common in popular discussions and writings on this topic. Most people seem to think there are only two main positions one can take: absolutism/objectivism, which states that there are moral principles that are true for everyone at all times, and relativism/subjectivism, which roughly says that what's right for one person may not be right for another. What's worse, some atheists appear to associate the absolutist view with religion (in effect implying that if one adopts such a position, it is only because of one's religious beliefs), and as a result insist on relativism. And of course, the religious more often than not criticize atheism on the grounds that it is incompatible with objective values, and thus can only lead to relativism.

In addition to all this, the terminology involved isn't used in a consistent way even by philosophers. There are specific views which everyone basically agrees on the meaning of (e.g., non-cognitivism, emotivism, intuitionism), but some of the broader terms are definitely used in more than one way — and none more so than “subjectivism.” No wonder, then, that there is so much confusion.

Before explaining how subjectivism (according to most philosophers who call themselves subjectivists) is different from relativism, let me state some claims that a subjectivist can agree with (and that I in fact agree with):

“Every society that practiced slavery was wrong to do so.”

“The fact that most people in certain societies accepted slavery as permissible did not make it so, not even in those societies.”

“Anyone in a society in which slavery is practiced should oppose it.”

I don't think I can make it any clearer than that. Subjectivism should not be criticized on the grounds that every society that has practiced slavery was wrong to do so. And the reason is simple: the theory is not incompatible with the claim that it is always wrong to own another human being.

The difference between relativism and subjectivism

There are two types of moral relativism, the individual type and the group type. Often, people use “relativism” to mean only the latter, though that's also commonly called “cultural relativism.” But it's probably easier to understand the basic idea behind relativism if we start with the individual variety.

Basically, individual relativism is the view that when someone says, e.g., “x is wrong,” what they are saying is “I disapprove of x.” Thus, if I say slavery is wrong, but plantation-owner Sam says it is right, we can both be saying something true. For what I am doing, in effect, is reporting the fact that I disapprove of slavery, and what he is doing is reporting the fact that he approves of it. It follows that we are both correct!

Group relativism is exactly like this, except relative to societies instead of individuals. Thus, if I say human sacrifice is wrong, I am only saying that, in modern-day America (at least), human sacrifice is frowned upon, whereas if Zahatopolc the Inca says it's right, he is only saying that in his society it's allowed. Thus, once again, we can both be right.

One problem many have with this view is that it apparently makes it impossible to criticize other cultures. But in fact, many relativists endorse this consequence, defending it as the only really tolerant attitude. (Some, when they make this claim, even appear to treat toleration as a moral absolute.)

A subjectivist disagrees. According to subjectivism, moral statements don't state facts about the world (not even about what one or one's society believes). Rather, such statements express one's feelings about moral matters. So, if you say human sacrifice is wrong, you are not reporting what you or those in your group believe. You are expressing your disapproval. And there's no reason to claim that this disapproval doesn't apply to what others, including those in other cultures, believe or practice. That's why as a subjectivist, one can say slavery is wrong, period.

Note: There are many who confuse relativism with the idea that moral principles have exceptions. So if I state as a moral principle that (say) stealing is wrong, someone might object that in certain situations it is perfectly justified. For example, if the only way to save the life of someone who's been bitten by a venomous snake is by stealing some anti-venom, then you should do so. But that's not relativism. Non-relativists are perfectly willing to concede that moral principles have exceptions. Even killing an innocent person can be justified in some cases. All this means is that to correctly state a moral absolute, one would have to qualify the hell out of it. And because that's impractical, we state close approximations instead.

Subjectivism vs. objectivism

Moral objectivism is usually defined as the view that there are moral facts that do not depend on what anyone thinks, and which therefore are universal. It follows that for an objectivist, when someone makes a correct moral statement, they are not only expressing their view, they are also saying something true about reality. Objectivists therefore feel that something crucial is missing in the subjectivist view of things.

However, I can't see what's so important about there being independent moral facts that exist in addition to our moral commitments. When I say slavery is wrong, I'm expressing something I feel very strongly. I would not feel any different about it were I to find out that it is also a fact that slavery is wrong. It wouldn't make me oppose slavery even more.

Maybe objectivists also feel that on their view, it is possible to demonstrate what is really right and wrong (whereas on subjectivism that's obviously ruled out, since there isn't a “really” right or wrong, only how people feel about things). But as everyone should know, that's easier said than done. No one's come up with a theory of ethics that commands universal agreement, or anything close to it.

Lastly, objectivists of course assume that the particular moral views they themselves hold are the factually correct ones. But since people disagree over morality, it follows that if objectivism is true, most objectivists have a bunch of false moral beliefs. You may think slavery is wrong, but those who defend it based on what's in the Bible could be right. A subjectivist at least cannot have that problem. I disapprove of the Bible's acceptance of slavery, and that's that.

For all these reasons (and a few others), I don't see a problem with upholding subjectivism in ethics. It is not a view that in any way diminishes the importance of morality.


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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ON THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY, PART 2

10/9/2019

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In Part 1, we saw that the Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT) attempts to avoid the Euthyphro dilemma by postulating that God's nature is such that he would never command, say, torturing babies (and thus make torturing babies good). However, it was argued that this solution doesn't work, for in place of the original dilemma, we can now ask, is what God commands good only because he has that specific nature, or would his commands still be good if his nature were different?

If the former, then what makes his commands good is that they are compatible with the particular nature that he has, and not merely because they are his commands. But then God is not needed as a basis for morality, since in this case what makes something moral is just that it conforms to what any being with that nature would want (whether such a being exists or not). And that is inconsistent with the MDCT.

If the latter, however, then his commands would still be good even if his nature were entirely different. And that means that if he did command torturing babies, it would be good to do so — and thus we have not avoided the problem that plagued the traditional Divine Command Theory.

Unsurprisingly, the above criticism has itself come under attack by proponents of the MDCT. Their attempts to fix the theory, however, reveal a deeper problem — namely, that they have two incompatible views as to what is essentially moral. Like almost everyone else, they believe that what's essentially moral are acts that are kind, fair, etc. Yet they also believe — or want very much to believe — that what's essentially moral is whatever God wants.

Some of them openly attempt to have it both ways. William Alston, for instance, claims that “God is good by virtue of being loving, just, merciful and so on” (i.e., he wouldn't be good otherwise) — but then says that these very things are good only “because they are features of God” (i.e., they wouldn't be good if there wasn't a God).* But that makes no sense.

We can perhaps more easily see that it doesn't by means of an analogy that Alston himself makes (though he of course draws a different conclusion from it):

The standard for the meter unit used to be a platinum bar kept at a constant temperature in Paris — just as the standard of goodness for divine command theorists is God. But now, if we think of the meter as being defined as the length of that bar (whatever it is at any given moment), it follows that if the bar expanded slightly, the meter would also become slightly longer. This corresponds to the view that good is defined as the will of God, so that if his will were different, what is good would be different as well. If, on the other hand, we think of the bar as being a meter because it is of a particular length, then if the bar expands slightly, it is no longer exactly a meter long. This corresponds to the view that God's will is good because he is a caring being, and would not be good if he weren't. But it's one or the other; one can't have it both ways. To claim that the bar is a meter long because it has that particular length, and that a meter just means the length of that bar (whatever it is), makes no sense. And that is what Alston is doing when it comes to morality.

Some proponents of the MDCT have attempted to escape the dilemma by claiming that God's properties are necessary. God could not be anything but the caring being that he is — and this, it is said, means that one cannot meaningfully consider what would be the case if he were different.

But even supposing God's properties could not be anything other than what they in fact are, it still remains the case that we don't necessarily know what they are. Therefore, it does make sense to ask what it would mean on this theory if God commanded something like torturing babies. To put it another way, we must distinguish between metaphysical and epistemic possibilities. It may be metaphysically impossible for God to command such a horrible thing, but we don't know that it is, and so must consider it as a possibility.

At this point, the proponent of the MDCT may reply that the theory is supposed to explain the metaphysical basis for morality; it isn't necessarily supposed to guarantee that we know what the correct morality is. We may not know what is or isn't possible for God to command, but the fact remains that there are certain things that it would be impossible for him to ask of us — and if in fact he is necessarily a caring being, he could not command horrible things like torturing babies.

But now the question one should ask is why the theist feels so confident that God's nature is that of a caring being. It can't be simply because he has revealed this to us, for he could be a being with the opposite characteristics who has so far been lying! Obviously, the reason theists think he is kind, fair, etc., is because they regard such things as good. But that just means they regard them as good independently of God having that nature. And that's incompatible with the MDCT.

The same thing applies if the proponent of the theory simply defines God as a caring being — so that if these weren't the creator's properties, the creator wouldn't be God. In that case, we could be certain that God wouldn't command horrible acts. But again, the question is, why define God this way unless it is because such properties are already regarded as good? The meter bar was selected as the standard in part because it was of the right length, the length of other measuring instruments that already existed to represent (albeit less precisely) meters. Similarly, God is thought of by divine command theorists to be the standard of goodness because he is thought to have a nature that is of the right type, a type that is independently regarded as good.

Proponents of the theory therefore should either admit that they accept independent moral principles, or else bite the bullet and say that morality depends on God's morally-arbitrary will, so that even torturing babies might turn out to be good. The MDCT does not solve the problems found in the traditional Divine Command Theory.


* William Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in William Lane Craig, ed., Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, p. 292.


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]
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ON THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY, PART 1

9/21/2019

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If you ask the average believer why killing an innocent person is wrong, chances are they will say something like, “because God commanded us not to murder.” This suggests that most Christians agree with the traditional Divine Command Theory (DCT). On this theory, what makes something right or wrong, good or bad, is God's will. Thus, killing an innocent person is morally wrong because God has a rule against murder, charity is right because he wants us to love our neighbor, and so on. I doubt whether the majority of Christians actually accept the DCT, however.

On a previous post, I argued that, if people actually learned morality from The Bible, then they would not find anything in it morally problematic. Similarly, if believers thought that what makes something right or wrong is nothing more than God's will, they should not find any of God's commands disturbing. On more than one occasion, the biblical God commanded the slaughter of women and children. If the DCT is correct, then that was obviously the right thing to do. Remember, all that it takes to make something good is God willing it. And yet, even when theists bite the bullet and say that there must have been a good reason for such a command, they show by their hesitation that they do not find it obvious at all. Similarly, consider the fact that God regarded slavery as permissible. Why don't most Christians today accept that? After all, the permissibility of owning other human beings follows straightforwardly from the DCT and the claim that the Bible is the word of God. But fortunately, most Christians apply an independent moral standard, and as a result reject the pro-slavery position (even if to do so they have to make up some excuse for God).

Most believers are also unaware of the so-called Euthyphro dilemma. In other words, they fail to distinguish between

“God wants us to do x because x is good,” and

“x is good because God wants us to do x.”

Thus, when they say that charity is good since God commanded us to be charitable, they may (at least upon reflection) actually mean the first of the above. But that is inconsistent with the DCT: If God wants us to do x because x is good, then the goodness of the act is independent of God's desiring it. The actual DCT is represented by the second option. That second option is, however, problematic, even if one ignores the bad things God commands in the Bible. For if all it takes for something to be good is God's will, then God can will that torturing children is good. And that is the main difficulty found in the DCT. If God were to will the opposite of what he supposedly has willed — if he decided that murder was good and charity bad — then killing innocent people would be right, and helping those in need would be a sin. And that's something most believers cannot accept.

It also follows from the DCT that if there is no God, nothing is right or wrong, which is rather implausible. Imagine two possible worlds that are exactly alike in every respect, except that in the first God exists, while in the second he doesn't. If in the first world, torturing children for fun is just about the worst thing one could do, how could it be that in the second world, the same act doesn't matter one way or the other? The suffering caused by the act is exactly the same in both worlds, so why should the existence or non-existence of God make any difference?

As implausible as this consequence of the DCT is, however, many believers welcome it, for it gives them an argument for theism (if there were no God, nothing would be right or wrong; but obviously some things are right and others wrong; therefore, God exists). Personally, I think this is too high a price to pay for having such an argument. To say that torturing children for fun is conceivably not immoral just so one can maintain that there is a God, is itself immoral. But whatever the proponent of the DCT thinks about this, the original dilemma remains. Either God has a moral reason for what he commands (in which case there is an independent moral standard and the DCT is false) or God's commands are morally arbitrary (in which case he could make anything right or wrong).


The Modified Divine Command Theory (MDCT) is designed to escape the horns of this dilemma by introducing a third option. According to the MDCT, God cannot will just anything to be good or bad because he wills in accordance with his nature. God is by nature loving, just, faithful, etc. He therefore would never command us to torture children or do anything else inconsistent with what such a being would want. According to proponents of the MDCT, this solves the problem, for now one no longer must choose either horn of the dilemma. (The problem that without God, nothing would be right or wrong remains, of course.)

But does this solution work? Not if the third option is problematic as well. The point of both the DCT and the MDCT is to explain the source of moral value. But the MDCT just raises a new Euthyphro-style dilemma: Is what God commands good only because he is a caring God, or would his commands still be good if he were different?

Let's consider each alternative in turn. Suppose that the first is correct: God's commands are good because he has a caring nature, and would not be good if he were uncaring. Then what makes his commands good is not that they are God's commands, but rather that they are those that a caring being agrees with. And if so, then there is an independent moral standard at play here. It must be the case that caring is good and its opposite bad, and this has nothing to do with God. And that's incompatible with any DCT, modified or not, for it means morality does not depend on God after all.

Suppose that one picks the second option instead: It is because they are God's commands, rather than because they are those of a caring being, that they are good. This way, morality depends on God. However, if God were the opposite, then his commands would still be good. And that means the original problem hasn't been solved. Therefore, the modified theory is no better than the original theory.


On the next post, I'll consider attempts by apologists to escape this problem.


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]



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IS SCIENCE INCONSISTENT WITH NATURALISM?

8/27/2019

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In “The Explanatory Emptiness of Naturalism” (another essay in Gilson & Weitnauer's anthology True Reason, which I mentioned a couple of posts back), religious philosopher and “former atheist sociopath”* David Wood, argues that, in order for there to be science, naturalism must be false. There are various reasons why he claims this is the case. These include the usual suspects, such as that naturalism is inconsistent with our ability to reason and that it cannot account for the uniformity in nature which science requires. (I've previously covered these issues, or something closely related to them, and rather than repeating myself have placed links to them below.) 

Some of the other reasons he offers also involve common complaints against naturalism, but in ways that are odd in this context. For example, he argues that naturalism is incompatible with the existence of the universe, and from this concludes that under naturalism it would be impossible to practice science! (After all, there first has to be a world before anyone can be a scientist.) But notice how odd this argument is (in addition to being wrong). Arguing that naturalism is incompatible with science because it is inconsistent with the existence of everything is, at the very least, overkill. Why worry about naturalism's incompatibility with science if naturalism is inconsistent with so much more than that? 

The last reason Wood covers for why naturalism and science don't mix is what he calls the problem of value. Naturalism, he says, implies there are no objective values. This, of course, is specifically denied by ethical naturalists, which is something Wood fails to mention. (Like most apologists, he writes as if anyone who is a naturalist must not accept objective morality.) Nevertheless, an argument can be made that Wood is partially right here: No one has ever been able to give a good account of moral principles based on natural facts. However, nothing about the ability to do science follows from this. 

Wood tries to show that lack of objective values rules out science as it's currently practiced by pointing out that at least some science is pursued as an end in itself. That is, although science can be pursued as a means to other ends (e.g., to improve health or food production), much of it is done for its own sake. But that means it is done because scientific discovery is regarded as good in itself. And this, he tells us, cannot be, given naturalism. For on the naturalist view, nothing is objectively good, but only good according to someone or other. The crux of his argument is this: 

“If we seek scientific knowledge because we value knowledge as good in itself (not simply for its benefits), and naturalism holds that nothing is good in itself, then naturalism will always undermine science” (p. 119). 

Wood's essay and the others printed in this book are attempts to show that it is Christian thinkers, and not atheists, who have reason on their side. And yet they contain arguments like the above. The equivocation in Wood's statement is so obvious that it could be used as an example of a fallacy in logic class. 

There are two distinct meanings of “good in itself” in the above passage. On the one hand, “good in itself” means that which is intrinsically, as opposed to instrumentally, good. In other words, that which is pursued as an end in itself as opposed to as a means to some other end. It is in this sense that some scientific knowledge is pursued only for its own sake, whereas other science is pursued with a more practical goal in mind. On the other hand, “good in itself” is used to mean objectively good (as opposed to the subjective sense in which something is considered good by some but not necessarily by others). Wood then conflates the two meanings. 

If there are no objective values, then the value that some of us put in knowledge itself is a subjective preference. We desire to know things. (Lots of other people couldn't care less, so they don't value such knowledge. That's their right.) There is no inconsistency at all in pursuing such knowledge while maintaining that it is not objectively valuable. The knowledge is regarded by us as valuable. It doesn't follow that it must be a fact, something everyone should acknowledge, that such knowledge is good. 


* Conservapedia 


Links: 

On an issue related to naturalism and reason: Stealing from God: Reason, Part 1 

On naturalism and the uniformity of nature: Presuppositionalism and Induction ​


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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ON THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY

5/15/2019

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In addition to denying the is/ought gap (see my previous post), those who attempt to argue for the existence of a scientific morality often deny the so-called naturalistic fallacy. This is the fallacy of defining moral concepts in non-moral terms, as Sam Harris does when he says that “good” just means “that which increases the overall well-being of conscious creatures.” Other examples of the fallacy include defining the good as happiness, or as what helps promote human flourishing, or (to use a supernaturalistic example) as what God commands. And the reason this is a fallacy is that, no matter what one picks as the definition of “good,” someone can ask whether that thing is actually good without thereby making any kind of mistake. 
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Harris, as might be expected, specifically denies this: “it makes no sense at all,” he says, “to ask whether maximizing well-being is ‘good’.” Yet at one point in The Moral Landscape, he himself ends up asking this very question! In endnote 50 to the second chapter (p. 210), Harris considers a challenge to his view which asks whether “it would be ethical for our species to be sacrificed for the unimaginably vast happiness of some superbeings.” That is, if by eating us, their gain in well-being was greater than our loss (so that the overall amount of well-being in the universe increased), then wouldn’t it follow that our becoming their dinner would be a good thing? Harris has no alternative but to admit that it would: “Provided that we take the time to really imagine the details (which is not easy), I think the answer is clearly ‘yes’.” 

Now, whether you agree with Harris or not (I sure don’t), the larger point is that there is a real question here. And Harris in effect admits as much when he grapples with the issue. He says that we first must “really imagine the details” and then only “thinks” the answer is yes. But if “good” just meant “whatever increases the overall amount of well-being,” then there should be no hesitation about this. Given that the aliens devouring us increases well-being, it would immediately follow that it was good. What could be more obvious? (Compare: if I were to ask you whether a particular man who has never been married is actually a bachelor, you wouldn’t have to “really imagine the details” of his unmarried existence and then answer that, as a result, you think he is a bachelor.) The fact that this thought experiment presents a real challenge to Harris shows that he doesn't think of "good" as synonymous with "increases well-being." 

The naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy because moral terms do not mean the same as anything non-moral. That’s just not how moral concepts function. When someone claims that something is good, they do not mean only that it increases well-being (or that it promotes human flourishing, or that it was commanded by God). I also think it’s important to point out that the approach taken by those like Harris and Carrier (as discussed on the previous post) is unnecessary. I suspect that the only reason it ever occurred to them to argue as they do is because of apologists who claim that atheism cannot justify morality. But in order to answer these apologists, one does not need to claim that morality is objective, much less that it can be made scientific. 

Moreover, atheists in particular might think twice before arguing against the naturalistic fallacy, for it is closely related to one of the most important arguments used by nonbelievers, the Euthyphro problem. This is the problem raised regarding to the Divine Command Theory, which states that what God commands is by definition good. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask of a divine command theorist whether it would be good for God to, say, command torturing babies. But that’s just another instance of asking whether something that is defined by some as good is actually good. 


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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“OUGHT” AND “IS” REVISITED

5/3/2019

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It’s nearly as predictable as if it were a law of nature: Every few years, someone argues with me online that Hume’s Law (that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”) is wrong. And usually, the challenge comes from an atheist who is convinced that they must set this law aside in order to defend moral realism — and thus answer critics who say that atheism cannot justify morality. 

There are two basic points such people should learn about this. First, that Hume’s Law is a simple matter of logic; in the sense Hume was talking about, an “ought” cannot be derived from an “is,” period. Second, that in itself this does not show there are no moral truths. It doesn’t even show that ethical naturalism (the view that there are “natural” — and thus in principle scientifically discoverable — moral truths) is false. Anyone who wishes to maintain that there are moral facts discoverable by science is therefore welcome to attempt to do so some other way, in spite of Hume’s Law. 

All that this law does is point out that, if none of the premises in an argument contain the term “ought” (or some equivalent, or something that implies it), then the conclusion cannot meaningfully contain it either. And that’s just a straightforward consequence of the nature of deductive logic: You cannot derive a conclusion that isn’t in some way already contained in the premises. For example, it’s impossible to validly conclude that Socrates is mortal if none of the premises you start with mentions Socrates in any way. Similarly, if none of your premises mentions “oughts” in any way — if they are all “is” statements — then you cannot validly conclude an “ought.” It’s as simple as that. If you want to argue against Hume’s Law, at least understand that you are arguing against the nature of deductive logic itself. 

So why do so many people think Hume was wrong? The main reason seems to be that they are unclear what his law is really about. Thus, for example, my recent online challenger argued that what we ought to do is obviously determined by our nature — and thus that oughts are derivable from what in fact is our nature. This is an old argument. Here’s Ayn Rand saying essentially the same thing in her 1963 essay “The Objectivist Ethics”: 

“…the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgements is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality… So much for the issue of the relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’.” 

But this merely assumes that we ought to value our lives. And that is to already start with a hidden “ought” in the premises. Rand hasn’t derived morality from non-moral facts alone. 

Richard Carrier, in “Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them)” — published in Loftus’s anthology The End of Christianity, though not endorsed by him — attempts a similar derivation of values from facts. His argument is that it is an objective fact that we desire certain things (e.g., that our cars run well) and also that there are objectively correct and incorrect ways of achieving such desires (e.g., in order for a car to function properly, its oil needs to be changed regularly). “And,” he tells us, “wherever both [of these things] are an empirically demonstrated fact, the imperative they entail is an empirically demonstrated fact.” Thus, that you should change your car’s oil when needed “is factually true independent of human opinion or belief.” 

The rather obvious flaw here is that the “ought” in the conclusion only follows if it is the case that you also ought to desire your car to run well — or, once again, if there already is an “ought” in the premises. The mere fact that you do desire it doesn’t cut it. And it’s very easy to show why not. Suppose, for example, that Manson desires to murder a bunch of people, and that in order to do so, he needs to acquire some weapons. Then by the above logic, it is “factually true independent of human opinion or belief” that Manson should acquire weapons. Which means that when the authorities put him in jail (thus taking away his ability to go get guns and knives), they did something factually wrong! 

I’m sure Manson would agree. But that certainly doesn't make it true. 

(Hume’s Law is often conflated with the naturalistic fallacy, which therefore is also denied by Sam Harris, Richard Carrier, and others. Next time, I’ll point out a reason atheists in particular might want to defend this fallacy.) 

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]



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RELIGION AND MORALITY

1/12/2019

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It is often claimed that morality comes from religion — that without the Ten Commandments and such things, we would not know right from wrong. On this view, atheists can be moral, but only because we “borrow” our values from the religious principles that permeate society. Even some who aren’t religious, or aren’t in any sense orthodox about their beliefs, sometimes say such things. Thus, the influential psychologist Jordan Peterson argued not long ago that Sam Harris is “fundamentally” a Christian because “he doesn’t rob banks, doesn’t kill people, doesn’t rape.” 

Yet there’s a simple argument that shows morality doesn’t originate in religion: If it did, we wouldn’t find anything in religion to be morally problematic. In other words, if we learned right and wrong from the Bible, then we wouldn’t find any of the moral pronouncements there to be disturbing. The religious wouldn’t struggle with how it could be that God commanded the mass killing of infants, for example. They would simply accept that as yet another instance of God’s perfect justice and goodness. 

Now, one possible objection to this argument concerns the fact that the principles one finds in the Bible, at least if taken at face value, are inconsistent with one another. God says, “thou shall not kill”, yet also sometimes commands us to kill. Might this not be the explanation why we find the command to kill disturbing? No. If we truly viewed the Bible as the source of morality, the contradictions would be disturbing only in the sense that they would raise questions regarding what really should be done. We might have a problem figuring out what constitutes an exception to “thou shall not kill”; we wouldn’t be disturbed by the fact that in some cases infants can be killed in mass numbers. Moreover, there would be no reason to consider one commandment as more problematic than its opposite. If we learned morality from the Bible, then after learning of the killing of infants, we might wonder how it could be a good thing for God to command us not to kill! 

Perhaps some will say that the great majority of God’s injunctions are of one type (against killing, for example), and that the problematic ones are those that appear to go against the majority. But actually, most of what God commands is rather bad, so if we go by this logic, our reactions should be the exact opposite of what they are. We should be disturbed by the fact that God sometimes commands us to love our neighbor. How could he command such a thing, when it goes against most of what he teaches? 


(The Jordan Peterson claim can be seen here, starting at about 22:10.)

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]


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PETER KREEFT ON THE NATURE OF MORALITY

11/28/2018

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In the Prager University video “Where Do Good and Evil Come From?”, religious philosopher Peter Kreeft makes so many mistakes that if you blink, you’ll probably miss some. This post points out the most glaring ones. 

The video’s overall purpose is, of course, to demonstrate the existence of God by means of the moral argument — that is, that objective morality exists, God is the source of that morality, therefore God exists. But there are explanations of morality that do not depend on God. Kreeft therefore begins by criticizing these “atheistic” accounts (two of which we will look at here), before proceeding to the religious one. 

Some atheists appeal to evolution as an explanation of morality. Kreeft rejects this approach by first pointing out that on such a view, morality changes — that is, evolves — over time, and then arguing that if it “can change for the good or the bad, there must be a standard above these changes to judge them as good or bad.” He uses the example of slavery to make the point, reminding us that it existed for most of human history, yet for the longest time “no one questioned it.” (Interestingly, he neglects to mention that one of those who didn’t question it was God. I’m sure this was just an oversight, though.) The idea, then, is that, just because slavery was once accepted, that did not make it acceptable — and so there must be a standard which applies independently of our change in attitudes. 

This is a rather strange criticism, however. Those who appeal to evolution as a basis of morality aren’t talking about cultural changes, like the one that took place over slavery. Their point is that human beings evolved to have a particular nature, and that nature determines what for us is right and wrong. But instead of presenting an argument against that, Kreeft presents one against cultural relativism. 

Perhaps he just means that the evolutionary account implies change in the long run, and so fails for the same reason cultural relativism does. Unfortunately, he then tries to argue against relativism by claiming that, if you can say that something might be accepted without being acceptable, “you are admitting to objective morality.” This, however, ignores alternatives to objective morality other than relativism. I can say that slavery is unacceptable, by which I mean that according to the standards I accept, it is wrong — even if it is accepted by some. And in saying this, I do not have to claim that the standards I go by are objectively true. In fact, I don’t. 

The next explanation for morality Kreeft considers is the attempt to justify it on the basis of reason. Now, I agree that reason isn’t the ultimate source of morality. Kreeft’s way of showing that it isn’t, however, is complete nonsense. He presents two arguments. The first is that, even though criminals use reason to plan and commit crimes, their reason fails to tell them that what they are doing is wrong. But if reason were the basis of morality, that shouldn't be the case. 

There are at least three things wrong with this argument. To begin with, it could be that the criminals realize that what they are doing is wrong, and simply don’t care. I’m sure Kreeft would admit that people sometimes knowingly do evil, yet he seems to forget that here. In the second place, if the reasoning they employ has to do with how to commit a crime, it has no more to do with morality than, say, reasoning about mathematics does. If the criminals aren’t reasoning about morality at all, then Kreeft certainly hasn’t shown the failure of reason to tell us the difference between right and wrong. And third, even if the criminals are reasoning about morality, it doesn’t follow that they are reasoning correctly about it. Their failure to conclude that crime is wrong doesn’t show that morality isn’t based on reason, any more than their failure to prove the Pythagorean theorem would show that geometry isn’t based on reason. 

Kreeft’s second argument against this view is, if anything, even worse. He brings up the example of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and claims they were obviously not doing that as a result of reasoning — for risking one’s life in that manner, he tells us, is very unreasonable. But this is just linguistic confusion. The unreasonableness in this case has nothing to do with right and wrong. If morality is founded on reason, and the right thing to do in such a situation is to risk one’s life, then correct reasoning about it will show that. The fact that that’s unreasonable from the point of view of self-interest is irrelevant. 

After having disposed of all atheistic views in this manner, Kreeft presents his case for God as the explanation by uttering the usual nonsense: “there are no moral or immoral atoms, or cells, or genes,” he informs us, therefore morality is non-physical, and therefore it must come from outside the physical universe. At this point, the video is just one obvious non-sequitur after another, so I’ll leave it to readers to see it for themselves. 


[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

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