RE: Moral Argument for God's Existence
October 21, 2013 at 9:54 pm
(This post was last modified: October 21, 2013 at 9:56 pm by bennyboy.)
(October 21, 2013 at 3:54 am)genkaus Wrote: If universal human agreement was required fro anything to have a singular definition, then there wouldn't be any singular definitions. The fact that different philosophers disagree on what morality means does not preclude it from having a singular definition, nor does is preclude us from figuring out what that singular definition is.Fair enough. We all agree that morality is a guidline for how people should act. But "should" implies some kind of goal, and since people have different goals, there can be no consensus about what constitutes actual moral behavior (though there are some very common goals, like the mutual aversion to death and pain).
The one thing that all the ideas and definitions about morality have in common is that they are all about "what a person should do" or "how a person should act". Common sense says that if there is going to be an objective, specific and singular definition of morality, that would be it - "morality is a conceptual guide regarding how a person should act". The subjective part comes in when different philosophers add on different addendums such as "how a person should act in order to maximize pleasure/pain ratio" or "how a person should act in order to achieve certain virtues". Without such additions, the given definition fits the description of all ideas regarding morality known to us regardless of any subject's will. So, if there is going to be an objective meaning to the word morality, that would be it.
Quote:So, if humans can't agree on a specific definition, you need a god to provide one? That sounds like classic god-of-the-gaps to me.Agreed. I think the "objective morality" argument really is a god-of-the-gaps argument, but of morality rather than physical inquiry. "IF there is a single morality, it must be objective, and if there is an objective single morality, it cannot come from people" can be reworded to "people cannot possibly know the maximal best way to behave in many situations, therefore that theoretical Moral Man is not human at all, therefore God."
