The Objective Moral Values Argument AGAINST The Existence Of God

[vulcanlogician]

The way I see it, for there to be universal moral laws, there needs to be a law giver.

That's why I don't think it would make sense for an atheist to say they think morality is objective. But most don't.

I thought you accepted natural law theory, and here you are pushing divine command. Tsk, tsk.

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On a law conception of ethics, conformity with the virtues requires obeying the divine law. A divine law requires the existence of God, as the divine lawgiver. Anscombe claims that since we have given up on God’s existence, we should also give up the use of moral terms that are derived from a theistic worldview. Since we have given up belief in God, we should also give up the moral understanding that rests on such belief, and engage in moral philosophy without using such terms. For Anscombe, this meant that we should abandon talk of morality as law, and instead focus on morality as virtue.

Alan Donagan (1977) argues against these conclusions. Donagan’s view is that Anscombe was mistaken on two counts. First, he rejects her claim that we can only treat morality as a system of law if we also presuppose the existence of a divine lawgiver. Second, Donagan contends that neither must we abandon law-based conceptions of morality for an Aristotelian virtue ethic. The reason for this, according to Donagan, is that a divine command must express God’s reason in order for it to be expressive of a divine law.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/

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