I have come up with a counterargument for this standard objective moral values argument for the existence of God that goes as follows:

Premise 1: Objective moral values exist.
Premise 2: If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.
Conclusion: Therefore God exists.

My argument against that argument is as follows:

Premise 1: The only rational reason to believe that God exists is to rationally believe that both objective moral values do exist and that God cannot exist without those objective moral values.
Premise 2: If the existence of objective moral values is the only rational reason to believe in God then without that reason it would be more parsimonious to not believe in God.
Premise 3. If all other relevant reasons are equal then it is more rational to be parsimonious.
Premise 4: But because there is no other rational reason to believe in God besides objective moral values then without that reason all relevant reasons are indeed equal.
Premise 5: It is more parsimonious to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God.
Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Premise 6: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 7: Objective moral values do exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God.

Note: I don't actually believe that objective moral values exist, as most atheists don't, but as far as I'm concerned this is a smackdown against the idea that if objective moral values exist then it's more rational to believe in God than disbelieve in God.

Also note that this argument relies on the premise that there are no other good reasons to believe in God... but my point here is that anytime any theist brings up the argument from objective morality as a way to prove God's existence it is now clear that that argument of theirs is absolutely useless unless they also have other arguments to support God's existence.

EDIT: I don't actually need Premise 2 at all but premise 2 makes the argument a lot clearer and more explicit, I think.

It was already absolutely useless.  Moral realism doesn't suggest or imply a god in the first place.

The point of the argument is to lay out explicitly that if objective moral values exist it's more likely that they exist without God.

Personally, I'd ditch premises 1 and 2, 4 and 5. You don't need 3 either. No believer would accept 1, 2, or 4.

(May 1, 2018 at 7:37 am)Khemikal Wrote: Personally, I'd ditch premises 1 and 2, 4 and 5.  No believer would accept 1, 2, or 4.

2 is not required but makes it more explict.

The other premises are required for the argument.

Of course no believer would believe them but the point is for them to challenge them and constructing a valid argument is better than just yelling "non-sequitur" at them. I'm not saying you're wrong (you're not)... but the point of my argument was to counter their argument. However on the following matter you are wrong:

If we ditch premises 1, 2, 4 and 5 as you suggest we are left with only premises 3, 6 and 7 (which instead become premises 1 2 and 3 of a shorter argument) and the two conclusions:

Quote:Premise 1. If all other relevant reasons are equal then it is more rational to be parsimonious.
Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Premise 2: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 3: Objective moral values do exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God.

And that doesn't even make any sense. It's not a complete argument. Conclusion 1 doesn't follow simply from premise 1 alone and the final conclusion doesn't follow either.

---

(May 1, 2018 at 7:37 am)Khemikal Wrote: Personally, I'd ditch premises 1 and 2, 4 and 5.  You don't need 3 either.  No believer would accept 1, 2, or 4.

Edited your post, I see... funny because that's your worst mistake on this thread yet.

Actually you do need premise 3. The point of the argument is that if objective moral values exist then it's more rational to believe in them without God. That's the entire point of the argument! How am I supposed to demonstrate that without spelling it out explicitly when that's the whole point of a logical argument?

Sheesh. You're still as terrible as you were with logic when you couldn't comprehend my valid argument whilst playing devil's advocate for pantheism back in 2012:

I made you look like a disingenuous prat at worst and an unthinking baboon at best back then (starting from premises I didn't even agree with, just like this one! You couldn't tell validity apart from soundness back then either!) and I'm doing it again to you now! Without it even requiring any effort lol.

Here's the thread back in 2012 where you couldn't follow a basic logical argument or accept my very basic point: https://atheistforums.org/thread-15511.html

You're very good at providing lots of evidence that you're really crap at debating logically, lol. But that's not the topic of this thread. Just... perhaps you should go read up on how logic actually works before commenting on a logical argument. Validity =/= soundness.

So if we remove premise 3 as well (the original premsie 3, not the new premise 3) we're left with just premise 6 and 7 (which become the new 1 and 2) and conclusions 1 and 2.

That becomes:

Quote:Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Premise 1: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 2: Objective moral values do exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God.

Note that you want me to keep the two premises that come after the first conclusion... which makes no sense.

And if I be generous and rearrange it so both conclusions follow after those two premises we are left with it becomes:

Quote:Premise 1: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 2: Objective moral values do exist.
Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God

And that still makes no fucking sense. Do you not actually know how logical argumentation works? Because you consistently do a very good damn job of showing that you don't. Conflating soundness with validity is embarrassing and yet you do it all the time. It's almost as if you're pretending not to understand on purpose... what's the word for that? Oh yeah, the word is "disingenuous". Or another term is "intentionally obtuse."

The problem with you, Khem, is you make the rest of us atheists look bad.

EDIT: I have decided to put you back on block. But this time for different reasons. This time you are not frustrating me in the slighest, I am merely laughing at you. But I have decided that you literally have nothing interesting to offer in a logical discussion and since I am not interested in irrelevant scientific facts (as much as I enjoy science, I'm not interested in seeing you posting scientific facts when you are incapable of telling whether they address the argument in question or not)... and I don't find you amusing or fun to be around either: The only possible reason to respond to you left is to explain to others why you're illogical to stop you spreading your incorrect bullshit all over AF (just like I would with a theist or anyone else who is wrong). But I think that as long as people are aware of that thread from 2012 (that I posted here in this post) where you made so much of an ass of yourself that you violated the Law of Identity and yet still wouldn't admit you're wrong (when you suggested that even if "God" only meant "Universe" then not believing in God wouldn't mean not believing in the universe... it's like saying if A=B then not believing in B is not believing in A... which violates the law of identity because it equates to saying that not believing in A is not not believing in A)... and humiliated yourself fully through not understanding the distinction between validity and soundness. Finally, you never admitting you were wrong (even today) which means you are either still too stupid to understand the most basic of logic or you're too intellectually dishonest to admit you are wrong (and there was even another thread where you argued that in other universes 2+2 could =5 without you equivocating which violates basic modal logic....).... and if anyone can't see how poor you are at logic after looking at that thread... then myself nor any other rational person is never going to be able to convince them anyway.



I actually consider you in this category. You get science and evidence but you sure as hell don't get logic.

So seen as you are beyond hope, and responding to you merely feeds your pointless digressions (responding to you is just a waste of time and energy seen as you haven't even progressed in the last 6 years)... it's back on block you go. Maybe one day you'll understand how a logical argument actually works (or, likely, you do understand but keep behaving as if you don't... it's disingenuousness on a level that I consider it borderline trolling on your part if you really aren't just stupid).

When someone is so illogical that they won't admit they are wrong or see that they are wrong when they very clearly are straight-up violating the Law of Identity... the most basic law of logic... and won't even accept the truth of a logical tautology... then such a person is definitely not worth responding to. You've been given 6 years to learn you were wrong or be honest about your wrongness... and it's just either sheer stupidity or illogicality on the highest of levels. If you're willing to disagree with someone when they say A=A and if you're willing to insist that when you say A=not A then you're not wrong and you're still right.... then you're literally either as illogical as it gets or as intellectually dishonest as it gets... and very much never ever worth responding to in a rational discussion. Sorry Khem, but I can't think of a better reason to block someone that they would rather say squares were circles than admit they were wrong. Back on block you go. Talking to you is nothing but a waste of time, energy and it clogs up threads with your irrelevant digressions too. I shall not feed your digressions anymore.

As for this thread specifically well: If you were to respond to this thread you were supposed to actually address my argument. I said premise 2 was redundant because it is... but like I said I think it helps make things clearer. But no, you didn't want to remove just the second premise you wanted to remove almost the entire argument making it completely incoherent LOL. That's not addressing my argument at all! And that's completely illogical! You don't understand at all! OMG that was dumb and I still find it hilarious even now LOL. And when you say that theists aren't going to accept the premises anyway.... duh. And when you say that there was no reason to take their argument seriously anyway.... duh. That's not the fucking point is it?! The fucking point was I was making a valid argument against theirs! This is not about being pragmatic this is about me attempting exactly what I said I was attempting in the OP Literally pretty much all you ever do is digress with irrelevant trivial truths! It's fucking pathetic! Bahahahah. Okay anyway bye.

(May 1, 2018 at 8:35 am)Hammy Wrote: If we ditch premises 1, 2, 4 and 5 as you suggest we are left with only premises 3, 6 and 7 (which instead become premises 1 2 and 3 of a shorter argument) and the two conclusions:

Quote:Premise 1. If all other relevant reasons are equal then it is more rational to be parsimonious.
Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Premise 2: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 3: Objective moral values do exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God.

And that doesn't even make any sense. It's not a complete argument. Conclusion 1 doesn't follow simply from premise 1 alone and the final conclusion doesn't follow either.

Of that, I'd only keep 1, 2 and 3....the conclusion didn't follow to begin with.  The strongest conclusion we can arrive at rationally and parsimoniously is that it is more rational to accept the existence of objective moral values not being contingent on gods or demonstrative of gods....not that it's more rational not to believe in a god in any general sense. Any given believer can agree with 1, 2, and 3.

Quote:Actually you do need premise 3. The point of the argument is that if objective moral values exist then it's more rational to believe in them without God. That's the entire point of the argument! How am I supposed to demonstrate that without spelling it out explicitly when that's the whole point of a logical argument?

Well, I don't need it.  It's redundant to the new 1.

---

Try rearranging them, 3/1/2?

(May 1, 2018 at 9:41 am)Khemikal Wrote: Of that, I'd only keep 1, 2 and 3....the conclusion didn't follow to begin with.  The strongest conclusion we can arrive at rationally and parsimoniously is that it is more rational to accept the existence of objective moral values not being contingent on gods or demonstrative of gods....not that it's more rational not to believe in a god in any general sense.  Any given believer can agree with 1, 2, and 3.  

Bahahhaha. I took you off block temporaily just to see how poorly you dealt with what I said first. And I can't help laughing at this. The conclusion didn't follow to begin with? LMAO yes it does. One of the fucking premises is that objective moral values exist which is in agreement with the argument I'm countering... the argument deals with the fact that if objective morality exists then it's more rational to believe that it exists without God. It doesn't just refute the above argument (although that was why I made it): the argument clearly demonstrates that it's more rational to not believe in God if objective moral values exist.

Look dude if you think the premises don't follow and you ignore some of the actual premises then it's not even funny at this point it's just sad and pathetic of you. So I'm not going to even take you off block to laugh at you. Consider this my last post to you and you can strawman me as much as you like dude... anyone truly smart is able to see that my argument follows logically and you are completely full of shit.

Perhaps it is not clear why your objection doesn't succeed without premise 2 but that's why I said I am keeping premise 2 as it makes things clearer. With premise 2 of course it follows and it seems to follow even without it.

Premise 1 literally states that the only possible rational reason to believe God exists in general is if objective moral values exist! And one of the premises is that they do exist! There is literally no way to follow all my premises without arriving with the final conclusion! Sheesh you're slow.

---

(May 1, 2018 at 9:41 am)Khemikal Wrote:

(May 1, 2018 at 8:35 am)Hammy Wrote: Actually you do need premise 3. The point of the argument is that if objective moral values exist then it's more rational to believe in them without God. That's the entire point of the argument! How am I supposed to demonstrate that without spelling it out explicitly when that's the whole point of a logical argument?

Well, I don't need it.  It's redundant to the new 1.

---

Try rearranging them, 3/1/2?

LOL no the part you are quoting me on is the part where I'm talking about only two premises and two conclusions being left! There isn't even a 3 to rearrange, lmao.

What are you babbling on about, lmao.

The whole point of an argument is to make things explicit. If all that mattered was a short argument that is valid I could make this one:

Premise 1: Objective moral values exists.
Premise 2: If God exists there can be no objective moral values.
Conclusion: Therefore God does not exist.

This argument is completely parallel to their argument but is no better than theirs. The whole point was to spell out how even if objective moral values do exist it's much more rational to believe in objective moral values without believing in God. And you can't even understand my argument and say it doesn't follow all while you want me to remove premises so the argument either makes no sense at all or remove them and rearrange them so I'm making an argument no better than the theist's LOL.

Sheesh.... okay yeah... bored of laughing at you now. You're on block but I'm gonna resist looking at your posts to just laugh at them because if you really can't see that my argument is valid without actually pointing out any mistakes in my argument then I'm all laughed out at this point and you're clearly not worth discussing with. You're literally more willing to violate the law of identity than admit you're wrong and your repeated digressions, strawmen and irrelevancy just leads me to believe that if this were my forum I'd have permabanned you ages ago for being a complete waste of forum space. But this isn't my forum so you're in look there. Whether you're extremely disingenuous or extremely stupid in either case you're literally too illogical to actually discuss with people and this *is* a discussion forum. So anyway. Yawn. I'll stop looking at your nonsensical posts for now at least and hopefully forever.

Or I could just look but realize you're literally just trolling the fuck out of me or may as well be because your responses are equally as useless.

It all seems to come down to you really not understanding logical arguments and how they actually work. You're just a waste of time. Goodbye.

You are probably going to make some other bullshit error and insist I made an error but I'm tired of dealing with obvious B.S. and a failure of logic on your part. I'm not going to even bother correcting you this time even though I obviously very easily could do so. If I'm to spend my time correcting someone I'll spend it on someone more worth my time than you are.

To apply the argument, you'd need someone to accept premise 1.  Otherwise, you'd need to prove there are no other rational reasons to believe in God.

Premise 5 seems to imply there are other rational reasons to believe in objective morality?  You never claimed that, and you'd have to for the argument.  But again, you'd need someone to accept that, otherwise you'd have to prove other rational reasons exist.  

So if someone didn't accept premise 1 and the updated premise 5, you'd have to establish what constitutes rational vs irrational reasons to believe in something, which would be a huge mess.   

You also need people to accept the principle of parsimony. 

Obviously, they aren't going to agree with principle 6.  So you'd need to prove that.  

---

Also, the way you wrote premise 2 of the theist argument, God could exist without objective morals.  But objective morals can't exist without God.  If you think that's what they believe, then they definitely aren't buying into premise 1, 5, and 6.

(May 1, 2018 at 10:17 am)Hammy Wrote: The whole point of an argument is to make things explicit. 

I was thinking more along the lines of;

Objective moral values do exist.(3)
If all other relevant reasons are equal then it is more rational to be parsimonious.(1)
There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.(2)

Quote:The whole point was to spell out how even if objective moral values do exist it's much more rational to believe in objective moral values without believing in God. 

I think the above stresses that point much better.  

That isn't an argument against god..either in existence or the rationality of god belief, however.  It's a position freely open to the faithful, who are very much capable of believing in objective moral values not contingent upon some god.

(May 1, 2018 at 4:37 am)Hammy Wrote: I have come up with a counterargument for this standard objective moral values argument for the existence of God that goes as follows:

Premise 1: Objective moral values exist.
Premise 2: If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.
Conclusion: Therefore God exists.

My argument against that argument is as follows:

Premise 1: The only rational reason to believe that God exists is to rationally believe that both objective moral values do exist and that God cannot exist without those objective moral values.
Premise 2: If the existence of objective moral values is the only rational reason to believe in God then without that reason it would be more parsimonious to not believe in God.
Premise 3. If all other relevant reasons are equal then it is more rational to be parsimonious.
Premise 4: But because there is no other rational reason to believe in God besides objective moral values then without that reason all relevant reasons are indeed equal.
Premise 5: It is more parsimonious to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God.
Conclusion 1: It is more rational to believe in objective moral values without the existence of God if the existence of God is not required for objective values to exist.
Premise 6: There is simply no reason to believe that the existence of objective moral values require God's existence.
Premise 7: Objective moral values do exist.
Final conclusion: It is more rational to not believe in God than to believe in God.

Note: I don't actually believe that objective moral values exist, as most atheists don't, but as far as I'm concerned this is a smackdown against the idea that if objective moral values exist then it's more rational to believe in God than disbelieve in God.

Also note that this argument relies on the premise that there are no other good reasons to believe in God... but my point here is that anytime any theist brings up the argument from objective morality as a way to prove God's existence it is now clear that that argument of theirs is absolutely useless unless they also have other arguments to support God's existence.

EDIT: I don't actually need Premise 2 at all but premise 2 makes the argument a lot clearer and more explicit, I think.

Hi Hammy,

I don't believe that your final conclusion follows.  Even if the rest of it was correct, at best, you can't come to a general conclusion, apart from this instance.  ie... You may be able to say, that in regards to objective moral values, in is more rational to not believe in God for objective morals.    However this would be begging the question, as it is one of your principles.

As to the first conclusion, I would agree, that this is a counter-argumtent and not a defeater for the Moral argument.   The main contention seems to in the premise 2 from the moral argument "If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist." You are saying (correct me if I'm wrong), that if this is not true, then God is not necessary, and there is no need to postulate God.  However with this, you are making a statement, and therefore need to defend that statement.  It all comes down to what is necessary for objective moral values.   Which I think would be interesting, since you state that you don't believe in objective morality. 

Of course as you said, that most atheists don't believe in an objective morality, my experience, is that most atheists don't understand what is meant by objective morality, or the argument from morality.  That it quickly turns into a question of epistemology which the argument is not about. 
Also I agree, that you seem to have more premises than needed (I think you could make it into a simple syllogism), so perhaps a little parsimony here would be good!