God & Objective Morals

[FallentoReason]

C: objective morals exist.

At: then that means I can know them a priori (i.e. through reasoning) because they are independent of me, which means I don't need God to know them.

C: yeah, but it was God that set these morals. That means these objective morals point to a divine being.

A: but why did he choose those morals to be good and not other ones?

C: he didn't choose, it's in his nature for those morals to be the right morals according to him.

A: could his nature have been different?

C: no, he just is. He is eternal.

A: so they necessarily had to be like that and not another way?

C: yes.

A: what caused this necessity?

C: well, these morals are such that they work the best.

A: so God necessarily had to reflect these objective morals?

C: yes, it's in his nature.

A: then that means there is something apart from God that made it necessary for God to be the way he is. Just like the engine is necessary for the car to work only when I drive. There must be an external condition that gave rise to this necessity.

C: no, God is all that existed for all eternity.

A: then it can only mean these morals are arbitrary since there was no necessity, no external reason, for God to have been the way he is, but you say there was: they are the best way to live.

C: ...

A: therefore, there is something external to God where objective morals exist. This means I don't need God to know them.

C: ...

A: but, it seems like there is no way of knowing them a priori otherwise humanity would know what they are by now, therefore, objective morals must not exist, and since you claim God necessarily reflects "the best way to live" which doesn't exist, he must not exist either.

C: ...

***

Just a compressed version of a 2 hour chat I had with a Christian friend today. As we said bye, he told me he wished the conversation had been more "productive". What a subjective thing to say! It was definitely productive :p

[FallentoReason]

Derp, I forgot to write the first person as "Christian" and the second as "Atheist" for the first two lines, so that you know who's who.

[Ryantology]

Objective morality is nothing more than a naked appeal to non-existent authority. Even if the myth were true, God's morality would be no more objective than my own.

[FallentoReason]

Objective morality is nothing more than a naked appeal to non-existent authority. Even if the myth were true, God's morality would be no more objective than my own.

That's not even the biggest problem. I accepted objective morality as true from the beginning of the discussion, and one of the things I was trying to get him to do was to give me a working definition of "objective morality" so that together we could actually pin down what's right and wrong. He spent a good 20-30 mins trying to use subjective examples that "most people know is right"... he couldn't actually justify what it was about it that made it intrinsically an objective moral, therefore making it sound very much like his subjective opinion...

---

I just wrote up a syllogism for the above dialogue if anyone was interested:

1) It is in God's nature to give these commands as being objectively right
2) These objective morals are what maximize happiness & wellbeing
3) If 1,2 & 3 are true, then God's nature couldn't have been any other way than this way
4) If 4 is true, then it is necessary for God to be this way
5) If 5 is true, then something external to God must have been the condition that made it necessary for God's nature to be this way (i.e. premise 3)
6) If 1-6 is true, then objective morals exist independently of God
7) Objective morals do not exist a priori
C) Since it is in God's nature to reflect objective morals, God doesn't exist.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I found that exchange interesting as well. I also found your reasoning sound. Recently this problem has been something I ponder much. I offer the following thoughts.

My particular interest, like yours, revolves around what it actually means to say something is objective. You apply the term objective to physically definable things and systems. I consider physical things quantifiable, i.e. measurable, expressible as empirically observable processes, or capable of being defined as algorithms. (I welcome further additions or refinements to this notion of ‘objective’.)

If morality is indeed objective, then it is reduces to a physically process. Since physical processes are definable by algorithms and algorithmic processes are quantifiable, it follows that objective morality is quantifiable. But morality is not quantifiable, therefore morality cannot be objective.

Indeed, moral dilemmas express a qualitative aspect of life. In order to reduce morality to physics, you must be able to measure degrees of subjective experiences, like suffering and pleasure, as quantifiable brain states. I find that highly unlikely, given my own position on the mind/body relationship. Also it seems inconceivable that you could make a formula of measurable units, like electro-chemical life processes, that has an outcome like 52% moral & 48% immoral.

Considering the above analysis of objectivity with respect to morality, does it follow that morality is arbitrary. It seems to me that objective may not serve as the appropriate way to evaluate moral problems. Perhaps it might be better to focus on whether morality is arbitrary or not. Are there consistent guides, of whatever origin, you can apply to determine if something is fair or just?

[Esquilax]

Considering the above analysis of objectivity with respect to morality, does it follow that morality is arbitrary. It seems to me that objective may not serve as the appropriate way to evaluate moral problems. Perhaps it might be better to focus on whether morality is arbitrary or not. Are there consistent guides, of whatever origin, you can apply to determine if something is fair or just?

I'd say morality is subjective, but certainly not arbitrary. After all, there are numerous things related to moral decisions that are objective facts, and we use those to inform our morality, generally without even thinking. We know, for a fact, that pain is generally bad, and so we opt to define acts that produce pain as immoral ones. We recognize that we're social animals that depend on one another, and so we feel an impulse instilled in us by natural selection to cooperate and not to inflict painful acts on others, too.

Just using the objective data points of the world in which we live, we can construct a pretty good skeleton of a moral system that's then fleshed out by our more subjective views.

[FallentoReason]

I found that exchange interesting as well. I also found your reasoning sound. Recently this problem has been something I ponder much. I offer the following thoughts.

You're my favourite member. So I'm all ears

My particular interest, like yours, revolves around what it actually means to say something is objective. You apply the term objective to physically definable things and systems. I consider physical things quantifiable, i.e. measurable, expressible as empirically observable processes, or capable of being defined as algorithms. (I welcome further additions or refinements to this notion of ‘objective’.)

I agree with you here.

If morality is indeed objective, then it is reduces to a physically process. Since physical processes are definable by algorithms and algorithmic processes are quantifiable, it follows that objective morality is quantifiable. But morality is not quantifiable, therefore morality cannot be objective.

Wouldn't morality be an abstract concept? I mean, what does it mean for morality to be a "physical" thing? Does that mean that we can literally see the good in certain actions, we can actually point to a physical thing and say "look, that's 'goodness' right there". I may have confused by what you meant as a "process" here.. maybe not, I'm not sure.

Either way, I think for morality to be objective, it means that we can come to know of it a priori since we don't require anything physical or a posteriori to reasonably know if something is right or wrong.

Indeed, moral dilemmas express a qualitative aspect of life. In order to reduce morality to physics, you must be able to measure degrees of subjective experiences, like suffering and pleasure, as quantifiable brain states. I find that highly unlikely, given my own position on the mind/body relationship. Also it seems inconceivable that you could make a formula of measurable units, like electro-chemical life processes, that has an outcome like 52% moral & 48% immoral.

I'm not too sure how morality would work physically... an interesting proposition though.

Considering the above analysis of objectivity with respect to morality, does it follow that morality is arbitrary. It seems to me that objective may not serve as the appropriate way to evaluate moral problems. Perhaps it might be better to focus on whether morality is arbitrary or not. Are there consistent guides, of whatever origin, you can apply to determine if something is fair or just?

If morality is ultimately arbitrary, then what does it mean for something to be "fair", "just" or even "good"? Our moral compass doesn't do us any good if morality is arbitrary.

[bladevalant546]

I believe the fatal error lies with in the fact these objective morals God puts in place are the best. Since we cannot be God we cannot judge his motives. God if a perfect being or atleast superior intelligence, we cannot judge his motives. Reason being how do we know he is not being manipulative or even is what it claims it is. Basically in theory we need to judge based on our reality what is objectively good. Which usually defaults to what benefits mankind as a collective and pushes positive forward progress.

Since this being is not really interactive, at least to a relatable sense. A Christian, or any theist in general really is making a logical leap to assume what is said by said being is true. Which is why it is a slippery slope regarding the moral perfection of god. Also, I find it interesting that theists trust said being so highly when the bar of moral perfection in reality is not really able to be seen. In short, how can a blind man tell another blind man what something looks like.

[Whateverist]

I think the quest for objective morality is always predicated on agreement on some set of presuppositions. Like being harmed and therefore doing harm are morally bad, or some such.

But, hypothetically, lets say after exhaustive research we find some small set of moral principles we can all agree on. Would what follows consistently from that small set of moral principles really deserve to be called "objective morality"? I don't think so.

The point is that the so called objective morality is still contingent. If someone is born who does not accept that common core of moral principles we have nothing whatsoever to offer as to why they should accept them .. except that they are failing to fit in with our norms. So contingent morality can never be objective morality.

Even those who accept the common core of principles may disagree on how to resolve conflicts between them, and there will always be conflict. You do hear atheists arguing for objective morality based on reason alone but that must always be contingent on agreement. Or else you have to argue that a person should accept those principles to be rational. Of course nothing can stop the 'immoral' person saying "screw your rationality". If your morality is based on the imperative that one should act rationally, then that is still contingent and no true moral imperative at all. You might try to argue that irrational people are just defective but by then your assumptions will have so corrupted your logic that your project will be dead in the water.

[Neo-Scholastic]

… We know, for a fact, that pain is generally bad, and so we opt to define acts that produce pain as immoral ones. We recognize that we're social animals that depend on one another, and so we feel an impulse instilled in us by natural selection to cooperate and not to inflict painful acts on others, too.

For reasons I have posted about rather extensively elsewhere, I do not believe moral systems based on evolutionary psychology satisfy the requirements a moral system should have. Primarily because certain behaviors generally accepted as immoral, like rape, may in fact assist the survival of genetic material for some low-status individuals. Using pain and pleasure as an index of morality, like Utilitarianism, involves a highly arbitrary assessment of what degree of pleasure offsets what degree of pain (or loss) and to what degree these are spread among individuals.

You're my favourite member.

Well gee thanks.

…does..morality [need] to be a "physical" thing? Does that mean that we can literally see the good in certain actions, we can actually point to a physical thing and say "look, that's 'goodness' right there

To some extent yes. What I mean by physical reduction is this. You can translate everyday descriptions about abstract terms, like goodness, directly into the language of physics. You can say something like this action is fair because it satisfies certain criteria, perhaps a utilitarian one: For example you could define fair as the measurable difference between the neural states of the benefiting subjects and compare them with the neural states of the losing subjects multiplied by the index of genetic information preservation. So, you can indeed point to the output of the equation as say, “The results are in and we have detected goodness.”

This may seem silly and I think it is. But that is only because I do not identify the mind completely in terms of brain-states. But that is exactly what physicalist explanations of the mind-body problem entail: that every mental process can be described in terms of physical processes without any consideration of the qualitative content of consciousness. In contrast, I believe mental processes have features that prevent them from being reduced entirely to the brain’s observable physical processes. Hence all my quibbling on threads about consciousness.

Either way, I think for morality to be objective, it means that we can come to know of it a priori since we don't require anything physical or a posteriori to reasonably know if something is right or wrong.

If that a priori knowledge is not based entirely on a physical system, like the brain and its physical context, then you cannot truly call it objective since it cannot be empirically observed. That knowledge would be purely deductive, i.e. a categorical imperative. That keeps it in the subjective realm of qualitative mental properties.

If morality is ultimately arbitrary, then what does it mean for something to be "fair", "just" or even "good"? Our moral compass doesn't do us any good if morality is arbitrary.

But it need not be arbitrary if, oh say…there was an infinitely wise and just God, who evaluates the love found in our behavior against Himself, the standard of perfect love. At this point you wonder which god would exemplify this type of perfect love. I already know Exi's and Godchild's answers. As for me I'll hold off on opening that can of worms.