The Objective Moral Values Argument AGAINST The Existence Of God

[Edwardo Piet]

To apply the argument, you'd need someone to accept premise 1.  Otherwise, you'd need to prove there are no other rational reasons to believe in God.

Obviously I need all the premises to be accepted for the conclusions to be true, yes.

Premise 5 seems to imply there are other rational reasons to believe in objective morality?

It doesn't imply anything it is just an explicit premise. It's one of the premises required to accept the conclusion. I don't need rational reasons to believe in objective moral values. I don't even believe in the existence of objective moral values myself (I don't believe in moral ontology, I mean)... why would I need to give reasons for that when that's literally one of the premises of the argument? The conclusions follow from the premises. If I wanted to give reasons to support the existence of objective moral values (moral ontology) I'd give a separate argument for that. But I don't want to because I don't even believe objective moral values exist. That's why I had to assume it in one of the premises to run the argument. The point is that even if objective moral values do exist... it's irrational to believe in God.

You never claimed that, and you'd have to for the argument.

No I wouldn't because... I never claimed it. Why would I have to claim something I'm not claiming to reach a conclusion I'm not claiming to conclude? That makes zero sense. The conclusion follows from the premises. That's the point.

  But again, you'd need someone to accept that, otherwise you'd have to prove other rational reasons exist. 

This argument was very clearly about if objective moral values exist then the conclusions given follow from the premises.

Ugh, you're like Khem with your rattling on about irrelevant science and not even understanding basic logic. It's repulsive. Both you and Khem have been irritating recently. You failed really really hard on the free will thread and literally ended with an attack on my autism... you're even worse than Khem so you're totally going on block after I've written this post (another thing that's funny is both you and Khem have NEVER answered my question about the distinction between noumena and phenomena. It seems to me that you both don't understand it but are not honest enough to ask about it so you just ignore the question every single time. So there's another similarity between you two douches: You both ignore the exact same question repeatedly. You ignore stuff you don't understand. No wonder you two never learn anything from discussing with me. You're not even open to learning).

So if someone didn't accept premise 1 and the updated premise 5, you'd have to establish what constitutes rational vs irrational reasons to believe in something, which would be a huge mess. 

LOL if someone didn't accept the premises. The whole point of the argument is that the conclusions follow from the premises. Sheesh. What the fuck is with all these atheists who love science but can't even handle basic logical argumentation?

You also need people to accept the principle of parsimony.

Uh duh... that's why one of the premises given is regarding the rationality of parsimony.

Obviously, they aren't going to agree with principle 6.  So you'd need to prove that. 

No... I'd need a separate argument to prove that and only if I wanted to. The whole point of an argument is that the conclusion follows from the premises. I never claimed my argument was sound. The whole point of my argument is for it to be valid: Of course I don't think it's sound when I wouldn't even accept one of the premises myself (that objective moral values exist).

The point is that theists think the existence of objective moral values is reason to believe that God exists. And hence they give objective moral values as an argument for God. But my argument's point is to demonstrate that even if objective moral values exist it's more likely that they exist without a God.

Also, the way you wrote premise 2 of the theist argument, God could exist without objective morals.  But objective morals can't exist without God.  If you think that's what they believe, then they definitely aren't buying into premise 1, 5, and 6.

Er, no. The theistic argument uses the existence of objective moral values to explain God's existence. So the point is that objective moral values not only don't mean God exists but if they do exist they're more likely to exist without God. So if the only reason theists are believing in God is because they believe in objective moral values... then that is not only no reason to believe God exists, but they have no other reason to believe in God left, and objective moral values are actually more likely to exist without God.

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Hi Hammy,

I don't believe that your final conclusion follows.  Even if the rest of it was correct, at best, you can't come to a general conclusion, apart from this instance.  ie... You may be able to say, that in regards to objective moral values, in is more rational to not believe in God for objective morals.    However this would be begging the question, as it is one of your principles.

Why do you think the final conclusion doesn't follow? The point is that there is no rational reason left to believe in God besides objective moral values and objective moral values have already been demonstrated to be more rational to believe in without God's existence if you accept that all the premises are true.

As to the first conclusion, I would agree, that this is a counter-argumtent and not a defeater for the Moral argument.   The main contention seems to in the premise 2 from the moral argument "If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist." You are saying (correct me if I'm wrong), that if this is not true, then God is not necessary, and there is no need to postulate God.  However with this, you are making a statement, and therefore need to defend that statement.  It all comes down to what is necessary for objective moral values.   Which I think would be interesting, since you state that you don't believe in objective morality. 

Well the point of that argument is that if their premises are true their conclusion follows. The point of my argument is if my premises are true my conclusion follows. And yet you still can't see that they follow.

Of course as you said, that most atheists don't believe in an objective morality, my experience, is that most atheists don't understand what is meant by objective morality, or the argument from morality.  That it quickly turns into a question of epistemology which the argument is not about. 
Also I agree, that you seem to have more premises than needed (I think you could make it into a simple syllogism), so perhaps a little parsimony here would be good!

I believe in objective morality in the epistemic sense and I do believe in an objective right and wrong therefore... I just don't believe in moral ontology and that's what I mean by "the existence of objective moral values".

Thank you for being polite, respectful and for actually addressing me better than Khem and henryp did... despite being a theist.

Yes more premises are given than needed but that's mostly because I'm used to theists knee-jerk reacting with responses such as "Parsimony isn't necessarily more rational!" so into the argument I added the fact that parsimony is more rational all other things being equal... and if there is no reason to believe in God besides objective moral values then other things are equal if objective moral values can exist without God.

If you accept that parsimony is rational without me having to explain that part... then I can shorten the argument down to this:

Premise 1: If objective moral values exist they can exist with or without God.
Premise 2: Belief in objective moral values without God is more parsimonious than belief in objective moral values with God.
Premise 3: There are no other rational reasons to believe in God besides objective moral values.
Premise 4: Objective moral values exist
Conclusion: Even if belief in God is rational it's even more rational to not believe in God.

Again, premise 1 is probably redundant but that's just to stop the theistic saying things like "But what if objective moral values can only exist if God does?".

These arguments can be lengthened or shortened depending on how many premises are accepted.

And sometimes it's just better to make a new argument... but this is a way to start things off.

As for your point about begging the question... there is no begging the question when all I'm claiming at this point is that the conclusions are true if the premises are. You can't say my premises beg the question when the only current claim is that the conclusion is true if those premises are already accepted. The premises have to be rejected or accepted because I'm not actually saying they're necessarily right or wrong yet. I'm just saying that if they're right... the conclusions follow.

But anyways: how you reacted is a lot more helpful to me than Khem and henryp getting all mixed up and not seeming to understand the basic distinction between soundness and validity. So, thanks again, for actually making more sense than they did