Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

First, no my original argument showed that morality required the existence of a supernatural agent with immense power over our interests. The 'catcher in the rye' god is still a god - still an agency with immense power over our interests. So the argument stands.

No, your first syllogism concluded that the instructive aspect of morals was the effect of an agent. Your conclusion of your second syllogism was that the agent from whom the instructions came was a supernatural agent with immense power over our interest. You cannot use the conclusion of syllogism #2 as support for the deductive validity of itself; that is a classic example of begging the question.

No, you suggested that one could satisfy the inescapable rational authority requirement without having to posit a vengeful god. This is something I acknowledged - I had pointed it out myself earlier and made essentially the same points about such a possibility, namely that it unnecessarily complicates the picture, cannot capture moral desert, and also does not capture the sense in which it is the source of moral instructions that seems to create the reason for compliance.
You then said that I had not therefore established the existence of a god, only the probability of one. I then pointed out that this was false as my argument establishes that morality requires a powerful supernatural agency - a god. The arguments were both deductively valid. And the conditions mentioned - the instructional nature of morality and the inescapable rational authority of those instructions are both essential, necessary conditions that any account of morality must satisfy. But they are not sufficient, or at least it is questionable that they are.

I do not know why you are accusing me of begging the question. How? Where? Do you just mean that my conclusion follows from the premises?

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Sure, but it is still technically a god of the gaps kind of thing. It's certainly the weakest form of theism [hence why it gets its own term as deism] and it's definitely the most easy to reconcile with logical thinking. It sure doesn't try to make specific claims and honestly given the choice between deism and every other belief system out there, I'd certainly rather associate with deists than the rest. Still it's one of those things where I have to point out; "are you sure god exists?" Then again it's very broadly defined...god could be the universe and it wouldn't necessarily need to be conscious.

Of course if you go that route, you must throw out concepts of objective morality...something Inigo clearly isn't doing.

Why do you keep suggesting I am making a 'god of the gaps' type case? That's bonkers. I'm not arguing like that at all. You're simply displaying a kind of prejudice - you're assuming that if someone has argued for the existence of a god they just 'must' be committing some kind of fallacy.

The argument is quite straightforward. It is that something we experience - morality - is composed of the instructions and favourings of a god.
Our experience may, of course, be a hallucination. It is if atheism is true. But our moral experiences provide defeasible evidence for a god.
I presented my argument in the form of some deductively valid syllogisms. That means you HAVE to deny one or more of the premises to resist my conclusion. It isn't enough to dislike it.

One argument goes as follows (this argument does NOT establish that moral instructions are those of a god, but it gets us on the way):

1. Morality is composed (at least in part) of instructions and favourings
2. Only an agent - something minded, something capable of believing and desiring - can issue instructions or favour something
3. Morality is composed of the instructions and favourings of an agent (or agents)

Premise 1 is non-negotiable. I'm just defining what I'm talking about. If you mean something else by morality - if you are talking about something that doesn't instruct or favour - then you're just not talking about what I am talking about.

Premise 2 seems solid to me. After all it is absolutely certain that agents can issue instructions and favour things - for I am one and I can do those things. And nobody has yet come up with an example of a real instruction that has no agent behind it as a source. Indeed, it seems quite apparent then whenever we discover that there is no agency behind some apparent instruction that the instruction is, well, merely apparent and not real.

The second argument goes as follows.

1. Moral instructions have inescapable rational authority (they are instructions that anyone to whom they apply has reason to comply whatever his or her ends).
2. Only the instructions of an agent who has an immense amount of control over our interests in an afterlife would have this feature.
3. Moral instructions are the instructions of an agent of the kind described in 2.

Premise 1 of that argument articulates a conceptual truth about morality. I am happy for someone to dispute it, but I want to see their evidence that it is false (there's stacks that it is true).
Premise 2 - well, challenge away. But so far as I can see satisfying this condition does require positing a god and an afterlife. There seems no other plausible way of doing it.

This still doesn't establish the existence of a god. But what it does do is establish that our moral sense data is defeasible evidence for a god. And it establishes that morality and atheism are incompatible. Not moral sensations and beliefs- those are perfectly compatible with atheism - but those sensations constitute a hallucination if atheism is true, and the beliefs are all false if atheism is true.

You're not entitled to have this argument fail. You're not entitled to there being some error in it. Be open minded and follow reason, not fashion.