Atheism and morality

[genkaus]

My confidence in the truth of atheism has been shaken by my reflections on the nature of morality. Perhaps my reflections are poor and I am making some very great mistake. But I think that morality may require a god. That doesn't show a god to exist, of course, for perhaps morality is an illusion. But it reduces its credibility to some extent.

This is your mistake right here. Atheism's credibility would remain unchanged by any reflections on morality.

Here is why I think morality requires a god. first, however, I want to distinguish between moral phenomena and morality itself. I use the term 'moral phenomena' to refer to moral sensations (so, the deliverances of our moral sense) and moral beliefs. I take it as beyond question that moral phenomena exist. But it does not follow that morality itself exists, for morality is not a sensation or a belief. it is the thing sensed, the thing believed. To believe an act to be wrong is to believe the act has the attribute of wrongness. One has the belief, but whether the act really has that feature - indeed, whether such a feature exists at all - remains an open question.

Second mistake. You regard "morality" as some sort of physical aspect of the world - referring to moral "phenomena" or "sensations". As if morality were an aspect of the the universe like shape or color, which can be sensed of felt. This creates a false dichotomy where if it exists, then it exists independently and as an aspect of reality and if it doesn't then it is illusory.

Anyway, here was the though that first set me off doubting atheism. Morality is normative: it instructs, favours, commands. It is not enough for it to appear to do these things. A morality that does not instruct or favour or command is no morality at all. Morality actually does these things. This seems to be a conceptual truth about morality. Yet, for the life of me I find it hard to conceive of how anything other than an agent could do such things.

Morality "does" nothing of the sort - no more than books "educate", maps "guide", law "punishes" or guns "kill".

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No. I am saying that real moral instructions would have to be the instructions of a powerful supernatural agent of some kind because this is what it would take for there to exist instructions with which everyone has reason to comply whatever their interests.

In that case there can't be any "real" moral instructions. Even the instructions given by supposed powerful supernatural agents have required independent reasons to ensure complicity.

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1.Morality instructs/favours/commands
2.Only an agent can instruct/favour/command
3.Morality is an agent

That’s the first step. Obviously this leaves open that morality might be us, our communities, or whatever.

Premise 1 is incorrect. That, due to non-specificity of an agent we confer agency upon the concept of morality does not automatically make it an independent agent.

Next step.
2.Only the commands/instructions/favourings of a supernatural agent who controls our fate in an afterlife would confer reasons to all to whom they are applied.

Prove it. Prove afterlife and that only the instructions of a supernatural agent could possibly confer the necessary reasons.

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You then accuse me of lacking originality. That's untrue and irrelevant. To my knowledge nobody has defended quite the view I am defending. For the view I am defending is not that morality is composed of the commands/favourings/instructions of the Judaeo Christian god, but that morality is the composed of the commands of a vengeful god who is not perfectly morally good. My arguments, if anything, only underscore the non-existence of the Christian god. But anyway, the originality of an argument has nothing to do with its soundness or validity. So I'm unsure why you mentioned it unless you're just a horrible person.

Actually, your argument is so unoriginal that it has its own name - the Divine Command theory.

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Normative moral philosophy is that part of ethics concerned with figuring out just what it is that morality instructs us to do and be. And the truthful answer is that I do not know exactly what morality instructs us to do. My method of figuring this out is going to be exactly the same as yours (I assume). I will consult my moral sense and that of others and try to systemise its deliverances.

Then you are starting odd on the wrong foot. Your moral sense would be the result of descriptive morality of your society and therefore any normative moral code you come up with as a result would be a reflection of that.

Metaethical inquiry is investigation into what morality actually is. Strictly speaking every normative moral theory is compatible with every metaethical one. And what I am doing here is arguing that the metaethical view that morality is composed of the commands/favourings of a god is very plausible. In fact, I think it by far the most plausible metaethical theory, for the reasons I have given.

Given the implausibility of god - nuh-uh.

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I don't understand your question. Morality is unitary - that is a conceptual claim. It has nothing to do with what morality instructs us to do and be.

Even if (as seems conceptually incoherent) there are lots of moralities, they could each tell everyone to do the same thing. And if there is one morality it could instruct everyone to behave differently. The unity of morality and the content and scope of its instructions are totally different matters.

The existence of multiple moralities all with different instructions seems to belie your statement.