The Objective Moral Values Argument AGAINST The Existence Of God

[Edwardo Piet]

It doesn't concern me, in the least, that a condensed and more accurate counterargument to divine necessity in moral realism fails to lead to your intended conclusion.  I rate that as a pro, not a con.

It's not more condensed and more accurate. It's more condensed and leads to an entirely different conclusion. Both are accurate. You have failed to demonstrate how my argument is supposedly not valid or "does not follow" despite the fact that it clearly does. And if the conclusion of your argument isn't the same as the conclusion of my argument then it's not a shorter version of my argument so I don't care if it doesn't concern you because you are being irrelevant to the OP. The conclusion is supposed to be that it's less rational to believe in God if objective moral values exist... not merely that you don't need God to believe in objective moral values. That should go without saying and is already one of the premises in my argument. You've effectively lead yourself to a conclusion that is already one of the premises in my argument. Of course you don't need God for objective moral values. The point is that if objective moral values exist it's more rational to believe in them without belief in God. And THAT is what your argument is supposed to address if you're actually going to be relevant to the OP.

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


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.


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.


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).


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?


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


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.


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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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.


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.


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

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The problem is that I don't accept any of your premises other than 4.  Which means that you still have more work to do.  All thought to be fair, rejection of premise 2 is mostly because of premise 1.

Well that's different to what you said before. Before you said my argument did not follow (was invalid) now you're saying it's unsound (for you at least) because you don't accept the premises.

Well that's fine. The point is if you accept the premises the conclusion follows.

What about the shorter version of my argument that I provided you with?

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But most of all I never saw why it was used as an argument for god, as I never understood why morals need to be objective anyway, they simply had to be agreed upon, indoctrinated, or enforced.

Personally I believe in objective morality but I don't believe objective moral values exist. I believe in objective epistemology but not objective moral ontology.

And it has been asked of me incredulously by Neo things like, to paraphrase him "That makes no sense how can you have knowledge of something you don't believe exists?!"... but my point is that I don't believe objective moral values exist independent of our minds. What I'm saying is that moral truths are like mathematical truths: They are true but don't refer to things that actually exist in the world. I can believe it's objectively true that 2+2=4 without thinking there's an entity in the external world that represents the truth of 2+2=4. I'm not a mathematical platonist. What would it mean for mathematical truths to "exist"? What would it mean for logical truths to "exist"? What would it mean for objective moral values to "exist"? Existence is different to truth.

Of course, because unlike some (most?) people I believe in ontological subjectivity... so I'm more than happy to think that I do, if being pedantic, believe that objective moral values and mathematical truths and logical truths exist... they just exist within human minds. It's just many or most people wouldn't call that existence so I prefer to say I don't believe in moral ontology because for most people moral ontology means an external existence.