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Permalink Reply by Michael Peterson on March 24, 2011 at 1:31am

What can I say? This person has just accepted this axiomatically. It seems unlikely that any argument will matter. They've just arbitrarily assumed that morality is of God. All they've done is push back the assertion one tier. Rather than assuming that a god exists, they've just assumed that morality is indicative of a god and used it to "prove" its existence.

 

It also seems to be a non sequitur to go from "Morality exists" to "Morality can't exist without a god."

The thing about non sequiturs is that, if they are accepted by either party, anything can be proven by that argument:

p: Morality Exists

q:Morality can only exist by will of sentient tacos

Therefore sentient tacos exist

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Permalink Reply by Becky Coats on April 1, 2011 at 9:24am

That's pretty perfect. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Robert Grobe on March 24, 2011 at 6:11am

I had a friend in school that brought up the same argument and my instant reply was "You mean to tell me that I need a book to tell me that I don't want someone to steal my stuff, kill my friends and rape my family?"  He had no reply.

 

Also, other social animals have a sort of social morality.  Chimpanzees will ostracize another one from the group if he or she breaks an important rule (I have no references to back this up, but I recall hearing it from Dawkins) and wolves will banish another wolf from the pack at times (not sure if this has more to do with a will to survive or a moral standpoint).

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on March 24, 2011 at 6:17am

Francis Colins, currently the head of NIH and a discoverer of the human genome makes a similar claim. In short it can be refuted by seeing all the morality present in nonhumananimales, particularly social animals. And looking at how our morals evolved from there. For a longer explaination Robert Weights "The Moral Animal" is fascinating. And I recommend this lecture that follows from Andy Thomson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=jnX...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=jne...

This is a fascinating subject so long as people donot simple jump to god did it.

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Permalink Reply by Becky Coats on April 1, 2011 at 9:28am

I posted this topic before I'd read "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright. This book has done a lot to help me understand our human development.  Much as I suspected but hadn't fully coalesced an understanding of, our "morality" is also a product of evolution as seen in the social behaviors of mammals as well as consistent behaviors seen throughout the world in humans.

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Permalink Reply by Jedi Wanderer on March 24, 2011 at 6:33am

I've had this rather frustrating argument with a friend on MySpace (funny enough). His argument (the same one your friend gave you) was that an atheist morality had a "metaphysical deficit" - it lacked an absolute foundation for value, so without that then all value is just relative to other values, with nothing to support the whole structure, meaning that value was essentially baseless! I of course pointed out to him that his entire metaphysical construct (with  god or three, angels, mircales, etc.) was a huge metaphysical superfluity, since everything that has any reality is explainable naturally. But this morality problem did throw me for a loop, so I really understand your frustration.

 

My further argument (which I hope helps you out somewhat, but I'm afraid it will only make things more confusing and certainly won't convince your friend), is that value must always be for some expereincer of values. It makes no sense to ask whether a thing is good without asking who is it good for. Religious people must accept this much as true, since it applies for every value they hold. The only need to introduce god here is to justify the whole system from the outside. This is just like in epistemology, where we can't say we have absolute knowledge of anything, because we can't go outside the system to find absolute support for the system, because then that would be part of the system, itself requiring justification from another outside source, ad infinitum. The religious solution for this problem is faith! In other words, its not a solution at all. I would be willing to bet that your friend is like mine in this way too, that when pressed on epistemological questions she tried to undermine reason and all beliefs through skeptical means, thereby opening the door for faith and making it seem as if her beliefs were just as jutified as yours. You might point out (if this is so), that where she feels the need to completely undermine all epistemological structures, she feels the opposing need to support the structures of value. This has the convenient effect of putting the argument just where she wants it, which is in the much murkier waters of subjective value judgments rather than judgments of what is objectively true of reality.

 

The problem with convincing religious people on this point is that once you tell them that value really is relative and not purely objective (though there is plenty to be said objectively about even a relative set of values, one which meshes quite nicely with how we actually feel about ethics), they automatically are repulsed by even the thought. This is, I think, because it removes the comforting support they had for their own beliefs about their own self-worth! With no objective set of values which conveniently tells them that they really are a good person, now they have to actually be honest with themselves about how to think about what makes any person, them, their family members, friends, etc, actually valuable. And they have already reached the conclusion as well, which is that with no objective set of values, nobody can really have any value at all! Not in any absolute, objectively real, lasting sense. Dealing with this problem aint easy. Its why there is existentialism, for one thing. You may have some good arguments for me as to how you justify a belief in your own "goodness". I have my own very complicated answer, but it probably wouldn't be able to satisfy any religious person. Anyway, keep me informed! I'd love to hear about how your own thoughts have progressed, and of course if your have any success with your friend, though I seriously doubt that you will (just from my own experiences). Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Becky Coats on April 1, 2011 at 9:32am

Yes, yes and yes.  I am definitely on your page there.  Thanks for taking the time to reply!

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Permalink Reply by eric stone on March 24, 2011 at 7:28am

Morality can't possibly originate in god. For the following reasons:

If morality originates god then anything god commands you to do must be moral.  Well god commands you to do a lot of things that we know are immoral like killing people who violate the sabbath, killing disrespectful children, killing homosexuals and on and on.  How do we know these commandments of god are immoral?  Something is telling us that they are that is obviously outside of god. 

 

Religion apologists are going to do some real logical gymnastics to get around this argument but they are all attempts to evade the truth of the matter - morality is independent of god and probably evolved as the most efficient way to get along with other members of our species. See:

Morality Requires God ... or Does It?

by Theodore Schick, Jr.

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The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 17, Number 3.

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Permalink Reply by Napoleon Bonaparte on March 24, 2011 at 9:28am

 

Si vous regardez le comportement social des autres mammifères de pointe, par exemple, d'autres primates, des éléphants, des chiens sauvages, les dauphins et les baleines, il ya la famille et de lien social, la structure sociale, l'ordre et la complexité des relations qu'avec notre propre espèce.

 

 

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Becky Coats on April 1, 2011 at 9:33am

Precisely.  Moral behaviors appear to have Universally Evolved, not just in Man, but among many species.

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Permalink Reply by Craigart14 on April 1, 2011 at 6:28pm

Evangelicals believe that God's will is moral and anything against God's will is immoral.  How can we know God's will?  Easy.  Just ask a fundamentalist.  Don't worry about age or IQ or education.  Any fundy will know.

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on March 25, 2011 at 4:21pm

The rational (such as it is) doesn't work like that. Their claim is that our morality is too complex or divine or whatever to have arose naturally.

In this respect it is similar their idea of ireduceable complexity in regards to the human eye. Since they are either too lazy, too stupid, too uncuriose, or too all of the above to grasp how either of them could come to exist as they presently are thru any natural processes, then they figure it could only have come about via some magical, supernatural, and miraculous process initiated by god.

Also Christians believe we are similarly divinely bestowed w free will so that we may freely choose or reject the bestowed of these gifts.

If you see these as being in contradiction w one another, and point this out to a Christian then, the Christian will either point out how gods omnipotence means that he is not restrained by our mortal logic or they may simply say you are somehow working for t devil. At the very least they will compartmentalize things so that they can believe whatever they want, despite whatever evidence, and despite whatever contradictions these beliefs entail.

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