The Moral Argument for God

[Mister Agenda]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this discussion, but here goes...

I've been looking at arguments for and against the existence of a "supreme being", and I'm focused on the moral argument at the moment. There are numerous versions, but a simple wording of it looks like this:

1. If objective moral values and duties do not exist, then God does not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

The logic of the argument is solid, so any disagreement must involve the definitions of the terms, one or more of the two premises themselves (of course), or both.

So, what do you think about this argument, and how would you go about dismantling it?

Thanks.

You should probably let other people weigh in before you declare the logic of an argument solid. Your argument actually embodies a formal fallacy: Denying the Antecedent, I'm pretty sure. At any rate:

If I am not Bill Gates, then I am not rich.
I am not Bill Gates.
Therefore, I am not rich.

See?

No, that's not right, I didn't follow your form exactly.

If not P, then not Q.
P
Therefore Q.

If I'm not rich, I don't own a helicopter.
I'm rich.
Therefore I own a helicopter.

[athrock]

The more standard way of stating the moral argument is:

1. If there are objective moral values then God exists.
2. There are objective moral values.
3. Therefore, God exists.

The problem with this argument is:

Depending on the definition of "moral", objective moral values may not exist. Some people seem to think it is moral to decapitate people that are not members of their religion. 

Also, there are definitions for "morality", and moral philosophies, where objective moral values may exist without a god, just not in the way theists speak of moral values. 

See: consequentialism. 

Also Sam Harris' book, The Moral Landscape. And Matt Dilahunty's lecture called "The superiority of secular morality", which can be found via google.

So, you're basically agreeing with my original post that the definitions of terms are critical to understanding whether this "proof" or argument for God is valid.

I didn't expect "morality" to be the point of contention, though. I thought the questions would arise over the word "objective". 

That's an interesting twist I hadn't considered.

Using your analogy, if some Muslim thinks it is okay to cut off the heads of people they disagree with, they would be acting no differently than a Christian who bombs an abortion clinic to stop the selling of baby parts.

But wouldn't most people consider them BOTH wrong? If so, then isn't there an objective morality that is being used as a standard to measure both?

[Chad32]

The moral argument is a common one. One of the major flaws is that people think morals can come from anyone, and still be objective. If they come from god, they're subjective. That's what subjective means. If they're objective, they don't come from any one/three individual(s), and thus we don't need a god for our morals. If morals come from god, they're as subjective as anyone else's opinion of morals.

I'm not so sure this is correct. Let me play angel's advocate for a moment...

The question is not WHERE the standard of morality comes from but whether such a standard applies to all people at all times.

SUBJECTIVE morality is that which may be true for you but not for me or true at one point in time but not another.

OBJECTIVE morality is that which is true always and everywhere.

So, if a supreme being is the standard by which we measure (and derive?) morality, then that morality is still objective in that it applies equally to everyone everywhere - regardless of the source.

Here's an analogy: the measure of a portrait painted by an artist is how closely the completed work resembles the person portrayed. If it is does capture the appearance well, we say that the portrait is a "good" likeness. Otherwise, we question the skill of the artist (impressionists and Picasso notwithstanding). But the measure of the portrait is the actual person being painted. Now, imagine a room full of art students all painting the same model who is posed in the center of the studio. The students may capture the model's features with varying degrees of accuracy and skill, and we would judge that painting to be the best which most closely resembles the model in real life.

Similarly, it seems to me that when we measure whether an act is good or evil, we do so against an absolute standard of right and wrong that does not depend upon cultural differences or personal preferences. And we make our judgments regarding good and evil, right and wrong, against an absolute standard. 

That which is the highest good is what theists call "God".

If God does not exist, then what is the basis for objective morality? Or does it even exist?

In order to be objective, it would have to apply to this god as well. Which it apparently doesn't. Killing is wrong, unless Yahweh gets angry because you picked up sticks on the wrong day of the week. If there's a maker of laws that doesn't abide by their own laws, then they're being a hypocrite.

The idea that there is objective morality is debatable. I'd say there is objective information from which we can derive our morality, but morality itsself is subjective.

[Mister Agenda]

I tend to think there is objective but not universal morality, although the larger portion of morality is culturally and personally subjective and a fair amount is arbitrary, I don't think we can construct a scenario where it is morally okay to use human infants as hockey pucks for fun. That said, an ultimate perfect morality is not necessary to make moral judgments. We don't need a perfect standard for being long to tell one thing is longer than another/ and we don't need a perfect standard of right to tell one thing is righter than another.

[Whateverist]

I tend to think there is objective but not universal morality, although the larger portion of morality is culturally and personally subjective and a fair amount is arbitrary, I don't think we can construct a scenario where it is morally okay to use human infants as hockey pucks for fun. 

Certainly not.  That would just be wasteful when you consider how tasty they can be.

[Mister Agenda]

I can imagine an alien species capable of moral agency for whom it is natural due to their evolution for the mothers to have a compulsion to eat some of their own young, perhaps as a way of selecting out those less fit while simultaneously getting some of the nutrients back to restore her strength. Which is why although I am leaning towards an objective morality, at least at the extremes, I don't see how one could be universal.

[Whateverist]

You could even throw in some detail about how the young that get eaten trigger the production of immune system building components in the mother's milk.

[athrock]

The moral argument is a common one. One of the major flaws is that people think morals can come from anyone, and still be objective. If they come from god, they're subjective. That's what subjective means. If they're objective, they don't come from any one/three individual(s), and thus we don't need a god for our morals. If morals come from god, they're as subjective as anyone else's opinion of morals.

Good old Euthyphro's dilemma.

"Is that which is good commanded by God because it's good, or is it good because God commands it?"

If the first horn of the dilemma is true, then the god is not the author of morality, but just the communicator of morality. And therefore, we could discover it on our own.

If the second horn is true, then morality is not objective, but subjective to the god's will. There is nothing stopping such a god from changing his mind tomorrow on what is moral and immoral. 

Some theists will state at this point, "but that would be against the god's nature".  Which does not help their argument, it only moves the problem back a step.

Well, to continue that train of thought, the theist would argue against the conclusion of the second horn by saying that God wills that which is good because he IS, as you say, by nature "good". How does this move the problem back a step?

If God exists, then He cannot contradict his own good nature today by willing something not good nor can he do so by changing his mind tomorrow. As I wrote in a prior post, the theist claims that God IS the standard for measuring right and wrong just as the original artist is the standard against which all the cover recordings are compared. I prefer Taylor Swift's version of "Santa Baby", but compared to what? The original, 1953 version by Eartha Kitt.

As for the conclusion of the first horn, if we could simply "discover" objective morality on our own, one has to wonder why this has not happened universally. Far too many people still seem to believe that raping children is acceptable for this discovery to be considered a universal truth. The fact that it still occurs seems to suggest that the process of discovering moral truths is hit and miss, at best. And some societies or cultures seem to have discovered that killing Jews or mutilating women is perfectly fine. Can we agree that the holocaust would still be considered objectively wrong even if the Nazis had won the war?

---

I'm not so sure this is correct. Let me play angel's advocate for a moment...

The question is not WHERE the standard of morality comes from but whether such a standard applies to all people at all times.

SUBJECTIVE morality is that which may be true for you but not for me or true at one point in time but not another.

OBJECTIVE morality is that which is true always and everywhere.

So, if a supreme being is the standard by which we measure (and derive?) morality, then that morality is still objective in that it applies equally to everyone everywhere - regardless of the source.

Here's an analogy: the measure of a portrait painted by an artist is how closely the completed work resembles the person portrayed. If it is does capture the appearance well, we say that the portrait is a "good" likeness. Otherwise, we question the skill of the artist (impressionists and Picasso notwithstanding). But the measure of the portrait is the actual person being painted. Now, imagine a room full of art students all painting the same model who is posed in the center of the studio. The students may capture the model's features with varying degrees of accuracy and skill, and we would judge that painting to be the best which most closely resembles the model in real life.

Similarly, it seems to me that when we measure whether an act is good or evil, we do so against an absolute standard of right and wrong that does not depend upon cultural differences or personal preferences. And we make our judgments regarding good and evil, right and wrong, against an absolute standard. 

That which is the highest good is what theists call "God".

If God does not exist, then what is the basis for objective morality? Or does it even exist?

In order to be objective, it would have to apply to this god as well. Which it apparently doesn't. Killing is wrong, unless Yahweh gets angry because you picked up sticks on the wrong day of the week. If there's a maker of laws that doesn't abide by their own laws, then they're being a hypocrite.

The idea that there is objective morality is debatable. I'd say there is objective information from which we can derive our morality, but morality itsself is subjective.

Your first point certainly makes sense, but it shifts the discussion VERY suddenly from whether ANY supreme being exists at all to whether a specific God, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, is moral.

Yahweh might be a lousy candidate for the position of Supreme Being, but someone could be a plain, vanilla theist without ever being a Jew or a Christian, and the moral argument for the existence of a god is not affected by opinions about the one candidate and still needs to be considered.

[Chad32]

Even if you were divinely inspired to write a book about a theistic god right now, in a few hundred or thousand years people will likely be progressive enough to think your god immoral and outdated as well. even if you wrote him/her with the best intentions. So it doesn't matter what kind of theistic god we're talking about.

[TheRealJoeFish]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT THIS AGAIN IT IS THE THREAD THAT WILL NEVER EVER DIE YOU ERADICATE IT IN ITS LEGION OF FORMS AND YET IT SPRINGS BACK MORE INSIDIOUS THAN EVER TO SNATCH AWAY PRECIOUS TIME.

Man I was going to join in but there's an affirming the consequent fallacy in the OP. Wow.