Moral Argument for God's Existence
October 17, 2013 at 10:18 pm
(This post was last modified: October 17, 2013 at 10:44 pm by MindForgedManacle.)
Sorry for the 2 week hiatus. Midterms, extra shifts at my part-time, yada yada. Good to be back. 
So, the moral argument for the existence of God usually goes roughly as follows:
Man, as far as apologetics goes, the moral arguments are really sctaping the bottom of the barrel.
But one thing needs to be admitted: The logic is valid. It's straightforward modus ponens:
If P, then Q. P. Therefore Q.
Woop de doo. Validity is no great accomplishment as far as usability goes. I could just as easily reverse the argument and it'd be just the same:
In other words, theists need to actually defend the 2 premises, rather than just chucking up this argument. And to date, I myself have never heard anything resembling a cogent defense of the first premise. Certainly not, in any case, from the likes of William Lane Craig and his copycat minions, who always seem to merely point out that there are some people who agree with that assertion.
The oft put forward Divine Command Theory honestly seems to me to be the moral framework of a psychopath and is cornered by Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma in my opinion.
Another quibble of mine is with the term 'objective morality'. That needs to be replaced with 'moral realism', because otherwise it's just confusing. It gets kind of annoying when it's claimed that because person X 'has' objective morality', their's therefore escapes moral relativism, which fails to realize that some can be objective, yet still relative (i.e those are not actually polarized terms).
Another reason I mention that slight annoyance is that such an assertion can't even be supported as at least being plausible and well defended in modern philosophical literature (that moral realism necessitates God existing, or some god anyway). In the 'PhilPapers' survey back in 2010 (of over 3000 professional philosophers), we get some interesting information:
~73% of philosophers are or lean toward atheism.
~14% of philosophers are or lean towards some kind of theism (mostly Christians, I'm sure).
The 13% left are like strict "agnostics/other".
Further, about ~60% of philosophers are moral realists. Now, I haven't yet looked at the breakdown of how many moral realists are theists/atheists/whatever but mathematically, even if all 14% of theist philosophers were moral realists (and they probably are, I'd bet), that leaves a whopping 46% of nontheist moral realists among philosophers. Not even close.
So the game of claiming (as William Lane Craig always does) that "Theists and nontheists agree that without God, objective moral values and duties do not exist" is a blatant lie or an ignorantly made assumption (assuming I'm not having a critical failure in understanding the survey and terms involved) and naming 2 or 3 philosophers who are atheists that agree is irrelevant.
The last common 'defense' of the argument is that we just know that moral realism is true... that's it. Or as Craig has put it, "We know that it's true, as much as we know anything. In our experience, we apprehend a realm of moral truth" or something to that effect.
Anyhow, thoughts? Do you know better criticisms of the moral arguments for God's existence? Problems with mine?
Okay, I swear when I searched 'moral argument' on this forum, I didn't see that I'd already made this thread before (I'd forgotten I guess). :l Oh well, that thread was 30+ days. :p
So, the moral argument for the existence of God usually goes roughly as follows:
Moral Argument Wrote:P1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
P2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
P3) Therefore God exists.
Man, as far as apologetics goes, the moral arguments are really sctaping the bottom of the barrel.
But one thing needs to be admitted: The logic is valid. It's straightforward modus ponens:
If P, then Q. P. Therefore Q.
Woop de doo. Validity is no great accomplishment as far as usability goes. I could just as easily reverse the argument and it'd be just the same:
Quote:P1) If objective moral values and duties exist, then God does not exist.
P2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
P3) Therefore God does not exist.
In other words, theists need to actually defend the 2 premises, rather than just chucking up this argument. And to date, I myself have never heard anything resembling a cogent defense of the first premise. Certainly not, in any case, from the likes of William Lane Craig and his copycat minions, who always seem to merely point out that there are some people who agree with that assertion.
The oft put forward Divine Command Theory honestly seems to me to be the moral framework of a psychopath and is cornered by Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma in my opinion.
Another quibble of mine is with the term 'objective morality'. That needs to be replaced with 'moral realism', because otherwise it's just confusing. It gets kind of annoying when it's claimed that because person X 'has' objective morality', their's therefore escapes moral relativism, which fails to realize that some can be objective, yet still relative (i.e those are not actually polarized terms).
Another reason I mention that slight annoyance is that such an assertion can't even be supported as at least being plausible and well defended in modern philosophical literature (that moral realism necessitates God existing, or some god anyway). In the 'PhilPapers' survey back in 2010 (of over 3000 professional philosophers), we get some interesting information:
~73% of philosophers are or lean toward atheism.
~14% of philosophers are or lean towards some kind of theism (mostly Christians, I'm sure).
The 13% left are like strict "agnostics/other".
Further, about ~60% of philosophers are moral realists. Now, I haven't yet looked at the breakdown of how many moral realists are theists/atheists/whatever but mathematically, even if all 14% of theist philosophers were moral realists (and they probably are, I'd bet), that leaves a whopping 46% of nontheist moral realists among philosophers. Not even close.
So the game of claiming (as William Lane Craig always does) that "Theists and nontheists agree that without God, objective moral values and duties do not exist" is a blatant lie or an ignorantly made assumption (assuming I'm not having a critical failure in understanding the survey and terms involved) and naming 2 or 3 philosophers who are atheists that agree is irrelevant.
The last common 'defense' of the argument is that we just know that moral realism is true... that's it. Or as Craig has put it, "We know that it's true, as much as we know anything. In our experience, we apprehend a realm of moral truth" or something to that effect.
Anyhow, thoughts? Do you know better criticisms of the moral arguments for God's existence? Problems with mine?
Okay, I swear when I searched 'moral argument' on this forum, I didn't see that I'd already made this thread before (I'd forgotten I guess). :l Oh well, that thread was 30+ days. :p
