The Objective Moral Values Argument AGAINST The Existence Of God

[The Grand Nudger]

It's pretty simple.  When society re-institutes slavery, or starts getting their genocide on, people want to be able to say it's immoral (and be right), regardless of what is agreed upon, indoctrinated, or enforced.

God's don't help with that and they have a shitty track record on both subjects.

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I saw enough of humanity in them (good and bad) to not believe ever they were objective, at least in the way theists present it.

Moral realism expects alot of humanity in morality, and theism's presentation problems are all it's own.  

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.

Believers are always trying to stuff their god into something. 

[robvalue]

I don't even know what objective moral values "existing" would mean. There's three senses in which I could interpret this:

1) Morality is physical.

This appears to me to be total nonsense. Evidence should back this up, after describing what exactly morality is within the physical world.

2) Morality is an abstract concept; a way of assessing actions.

Abstract concepts don't "exist" in the same way we usually describe things existing. For there to be an "objective" morality, it can only mean that there's a "correct" way of measuring morality. This also appears to me to be total circular nonsense. Correct for what? The disagreements about what morality is discuss precisely how you'd measure it in the first place. We could come up with a very specific definition of what morality measures, and thus develop an objective standard, but what is the point? It only applies (abstractly, and without effect) to people who subscribe to that particular definition. We'd likely have an objective standard for each person.

3) Morality is a rule governing how reality functions, like the (apparent) laws of nature.

If this is the case, then there should be some way of demonstrating what exactly this law does. As it stands, it doesn't appear to do anything.

Since none of these make any sense, I can only conclude it's either people turning their own moral ideas into the "objective" morality, or an appeal to some authority. This is again pointless and circular.

[henryp]

3) Morality is a rule governing how reality functions, like the (apparent) laws of nature.

If this is the case, then there should be some way of demonstrating what exactly this law does. As it stands, it doesn't appear to do anything.

I don't think there's an objective morality, but I'd guess this is the one religious folks are thinking of.  And the idea is that it 'does something' on the other plane of existence where spirits and Gods and heaven and all that jazz exist.

Another angle, is that it's like the 'game of existence.'  And somebody wrote the rules how to play.  If you're playing monopoly, and your little dog token is on Boardwalk, and you roll a 3, you can't eat a treasure chest card.  You can, I suppose, but it's objectively wrong in the context of monopoly.  Or at least it can be inferred to be against the rules if not specifically stated.

God creates existence.  Makes the rules for existence.  We're existing in the context of existence.  

That's how I'd pitch the idea anyways.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Rob
People use it as an alternative form of saying "moral realism is true".  

We could come up with a very specific definition of what morality measures, and thus develop an objective standard, but what is the point? 

That would be sufficient. The point is to determine what objective moral statements can be made..and what makes such a statement true.

It only applies (abstractly, and without effect) to people who subscribe to that particular definition. 

Objective moral statements apply to any moral agent that fits the conditions of the statement regardless of their subscription or agreement, can be concrete, and more often than not have some effect. 

We'd likely have an objective standard for each person.

That approaches the very antithesis of objectivity and moral realism.  Though space to consider the relevant or modifying specifics of a particular agent exists (diminished capacity, for example) the schema itself cannot rely on an individualist approach to the basic facts from which moral assessments are made.  

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God creates existence.  Makes the rules for existence.  We're existing in the context of existence.  

That's how I'd pitch the idea anyways.

That's subjective moral arbitrarity, not moral objectivism.

[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.

[GrandizerII]

For RR:

Valid arguments don't necessarily have true or plausible premises. What makes an argument valid is if the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion, regardless of whether the premises are plausibly true or not.

Sound arguments are valid arguments that have plausibly true premises.

[RoadRunner79]

For RR:

Valid arguments don't necessarily have true or plausible premises. What makes an argument valid is if the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion, regardless of whether the premises are plausibly true or not.

Sound arguments are valid arguments that have plausibly true premises.

Yes I agree....thanks

[Edwardo Piet]

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.

Premise 2 of the Theist argument, contradicts your premise 1 above.

Uh.... duh. It's a counter argument. Of course it contradicts theirs.

They're saying 

If Not B then Not A. 
(which equals)
If A then B.

If no God then no Objective Morals 
If Objective Morals then God.

No... they're saying:

A
If not B then not A
Therefore B

Or

Objective morals exist
If objective morals do not exist then God does not exist
Therefore God exists

You're asserting
A (objective morals exist) = True  AND B (god exists) = False is possible.

Yes that's the first premise of the argument [the reformulation of it I did for RoadRunner, I mean. It seems that you're addressing that one here. In the original argument I simply said that objective moral values exist in one of the premises. In that cases it's one of the premises but not the first premise].

If you can show an example where A is True and B is false (which is what you're claiming with Premise 1), you've shown their argument to be unsound. 

I don't have to show an example. As already said there is simply no reason to believe that a God is required for objective moral values. It's their job to show that a God is required for it. Hence why one of my premises is that objective moral values can exist with or without God.

End of story. But that should be the conclusion you are working towards.  Your premises 2, 3, 4 and conclusion are unnecessary.  If you show your Premise 1 can be true, you've finished.

You don't seem to understand how arguments work. I don't need to demonstrate the premises within the argument itself... the whole point of premises is those are the things that are already assumed to be true... and the conclusion just has to follow.

If I wanted to demonstrate the premises I'd make each one a conclusion for a separate argument.
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And nothing personal on not addressing 90% of what you say. But you are not a concise thinker or writer.  So unless I want each post to turn into 1000 page manuscripts addressing the entirety of every tangent brought up, I've got to try and steer the conversation towards what I'm trying to talk about.

Yes I am not concise but I am thorough and logical and you are neither. I am working on the conciseness as maybe it will both help you and Khem learn a thing or two about logic (or stop pretending to now know a thing or two about it)... and it will also stop me wasting my energy when you're going to miss the point anyway.

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I never had a problem with moral values, even when I was Christian.
I saw enough of humanity in them (good and bad) to not believe ever they were objective, at least in the way theists present it.

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.

Exactly! Theists who love propping up the moral argument don't seem to realize that a good enough system is by definition good enough when it comes to the matter of morality. But no, they insist it has to be perfect and ultimate for morality to be a thing. Never understood such terrible logic even when I was a Christian myself.

Morality doesn't have to be objective but it certainly helps! I mean, at least it helps when we don't give into total moral relativism where people dismiss highly immoral behavior in other culures as okay because "that's their culture and we can't dismiss it any more wrong than ours." Female genital mutilation for instance: Is wrong whatever culture it's in. It does no good to say "In their culture they think it's okay therefore it's okay. Who are we to say they're wrong?". We could say the same about the Taliban denying women an education "Who are we to say that's wrong? There is no right and wrong."

Well, I think there is a right and wrong. But we certainly don't need God for it. But not only that: If objective moral values did exist in some weird platonic way outside our minds (which absolutely makes no sense to me)... it would be more likely they existed without the mind of God because of the the principle of parsimony. Weird crazy platonic moral values are more probable than weird crazy platonic moral values + God.

[The Grand Nudger]

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 morality exists... not merely that you don't need God to believe in it. 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.

Oh, is that what the conclusion is supposed to be?  Heaven forfend I get in the way of reaching your desired conclusion, lol.

In any case, Neo's right.  Your idea of objective morality is incoherent, and not at all what anyone is referring to in moral realism.  Imagine how much it pains me to say those words.  Neos right.  There...I did it again.  Why Ham, why did you make me do that?



Moving along, moral realism not only lacks any divine contingency..the likelihood of moral realism being true is completely unaffected by the existence of a god.  It's not more or less likely that moral realism is true in the case of an existent god or a nonexistent one.

https://atheistforums.org/thread-52547.html

[Edwardo Piet]

I don't even know what objective moral values "existing" would mean.

I can imagine that it would mean they existed in some weird platonic way which makes no sense to me either.

But despite the fact you think that idea is crazy (and I do as well) I am sure you can appreciate that platonic moral values is less improbable than platonic moral values + God, right? That's all my argument is about.

There's three senses in which I could interpret this:

1) Morality is physical.

This appears to me to be total nonsense. Evidence should back this up, after describing what exactly morality is within the physical world.

I agree it's nonsense if by "physical" you mean "outside of the mind". That leads to some kind of platonic existence. But idealistic platonic values (and Platonistic ideals are idealistic rather than materialist, of course) are just as crazy.

2) Morality is an abstract concept; a way of assessing actions.

Abstract concepts don't "exist" in the same way we usually describe things existing.

I agree and this is why I say I don't believe in moral ontology: Because most people don't even accept ontological subjectivity and most people wouldn't call that existing. It's the same reason why we don't say the truth of 2+2=4 "exists".

For there to be an "objective" morality, it can only mean that there's a "correct" way of measuring morality.

Or that there are moral truths in principle whether we can figure them out or not.

This also appears to me to be total circular nonsense. Correct for what? The disagreements about what morality is discuss precisely how you'd measure it in the first place. We could come up with a very specific definition of what morality measures, and thus develop an objective standard, but what is the point?

Well the point would be that that definition would be relevant to literally every other definition other people have ever come up with. For example: If people say that morality is about what God wants even if it causes people huge amounts of suffering... they still believe that if they suffer for God and do what God wants they'll get to heaven and get an eternal bliss so even then they still cash it all out with matters of well-being. So the reason why the notion of well-being is the best definition of morality is because it literally makes sense of everything anyone is concerned about. The very fact that someone is concerned or cares about morality is a matter of well-being. Morality only matters because people value it... so the view is that the reason why values are valuable is because we do value things. So if everyone could value whatever they wanted without frustrating anyone else's values (/violating anyone else's desires) then that would be a morally ideal situation.

It only applies (abstractly, and without effect) to people who subscribe to that particular definition. We'd likely have an objective standard for each person.

Right so the point is that one definition seems to make sense of literally all other definitions.

And it's like the definition of "health" imagine if some religious person wanted to say that "health" is just what God wants even if it's bad for our bodies and minds. Imagine if this religion spread and most of the world accepted that. Would that make doing what an imaginary entity wants "healthy" just because it was universally accepted that that's what the word "healthy" means now? Well, it would make it what healthy would then become to mean. But healthy in the sense that we mean it would still be more important, and we'd surely just end up using another word for it. So the point is not to agree on definitions the point is even if no one disagrees it's a useful concept with an objecitvely right and wrong answer.

If everyone stopped using the word "health" to describe matters of health... health would still be an important concept. Even without a word for it health would still be an important matter. In the same way, whether we call it "objective morality" or not.... the objective truths that could be called objective morality would still matter. And if an objective ethics in the future did spread... people could easily start referring it to ethics or morality because it would literally deal with whatever we've ever cared about (or anyone could ever possibly care about) with regards to ethics and morality.

3) Morality is a rule governing how reality functions, like the (apparent) laws of nature.

If this is the case, then there should be some way of demonstrating what exactly this law does. As it stands, it doesn't appear to do anything.

Since none of these make any sense, I can only conclude it's either people turning their own moral ideas into the "objective" morality, or an appeal to some authority. This is again pointless and circular.

I agree that this one doesn't make sense either.

But this thread is not about debating objective morality. If you want to debate that with me I'll happily debate it with you on another thread (just be aware of what I'm claiming and not claiming and what I mean by "objective morality"... I think it differs from what you mean by it ).

This thread already assumes that objective moral values exist (even in a way that I don't accept them! One of the premises for this argument is moral values existing in some sort of platonic way which is absurd and I don't believe in at all!)... this thread is me playing devil's advocate. Why? The point is just to demonstrate to the theist that however absurd or nor absurd moral values "existing" in some sort of platonic way is... platonic moral values + God is more absurd than platonic moral values. I am sure you can accept that. Here's another example: The flying spaghetti monster + an invisible unicorn existing is less likely than one of them existing. I'm just using the principle of parsimony here just to explain to the theist why even if objective moral values do somehow exist in some sort of bizarre weird way... they're more likely to exist without God.

Most atheists reject the objective moral values argument for the existence of God simply because they don't believe in objective moral values. I don't believe in objective moral values in the sense that they do either, I don't believe in moral ontology, but I wish to explain to them that even if I accept their premise that objective moral values exist independent of mind (exactly like you say, what the fuck would that even mean?!) it still makes even less sense to me for them to exist with God than without God.

A much simpler way to explain the crux of my argument is the following: The Euthyphro dilemma asks "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" And the common theistic side-step out of this dilemma is to say "the morally good is identical to God's nature"... so my response is "Then you don't need God. All you need is the nature of goodness then. Why attach a God to it? It's more parsimonious to remove God from the equation."

That's not much of an argument but it's basically the crux of what my argument is getting at here.

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Oh, is that what the conclusion is supposed to be?  Heaven forfend I get in the way of reaching your desired conclusion, lol.

In any case, Neo's right.  Your idea of objective morality is incoherent, and not at all what anyone is referring to in moral realism.  Imagine how much it pains me to say those words.  Neos right.  There...I did it again.  Why Ham, why did you make me do that?

No he's not right because as I already explained I do believe objective moral values exist I just don't believe that they exist independent of minds and that is what most people think existence requires but it doesn't because, obviously, our minds are just as real as the external world is.

Desire Utilitarianism is an example of a theory of moral realism that refers to objective moral values existing within our minds:

Of course in another sense they refer to truths outside of exernal reality. Again, you are conflating moral truths and the existence of moral values. Moral ontology and moral epistemology are not the same thing. The point is that regardless of whether objective moral values exist inside or outside our minds those values refer to objective truths in the external world. Truths are not about existence, truths merely describe facts about the external world. For example the truth of the statement "The sun rises each morning" only exists inside my own head or can be expressed verbally (or with sign language).... but it describes a true feature of something in external reality (the fact that the sun really does rise each morning). Obviously the fact that we wouldn't be there to describe truths doesn't mean the truths would no longer be true. It would still be true that the sun rose without us there to describe it. Just as it is true that the sun rose before humans evolved to express those truths. But the point is even if the sun disappeared as soon as humans weren't around to describe it, and even if the sun didn't exist before humans were around to describe it... that is still not the same as the sun existing within our minds. And, likewise, just because objective moral values exist in our minds doesn't mean they don't describe objective moral truths about the external world. It is morally wrong for someone to use a crowbar in the external world to hit you in the face because it violates your values and thereby causes you suffering.

Moving along, moral realism not only lacks any divine contingency..the likelihood of moral realism being true is completely unaffected by the existence of a god.  It's not more or less likely that moral realism is true in the case of an existent god or a nonexistent one.

Not true at all. As explained in my argument it's more likely to be true without a God simply because of the principle of parsimony. It's more likely to be true because of a basic law of probability. Like I said to Rob what's more likely something as absurd as an invisible unicorn exists or the absurdity of both an invisible unicorn AND a flying spaghetti monster exists?

What I'm getting at is the same thing that Sam Harris was getting at here about why Mormonism is objectively less likely to be true than Christianity:

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Oh, is that what the conclusion is supposed to be?  Heaven forfend I get in the way of reaching your desired conclusion, lol.

And wow, going back to this... you either didn't read my conclusion at all or you're just being disingenuous again and pretended my conclusion didn't say what it said just because you wouldn't accept it if it were a premise. Again, you don't seem to understand that when I'm only arguing for validity I'm only arguing for validity. Just like on that thread in 2012 you turn into a disingenuous fuck and ignore what I'm actually claiming just because you consider certain premises unsound. This is when pragmatism sucks donkey balls: When it leads to people justifying their own intellectual dishonesty because they think such intellectual dishonesty is useful. If you consider my argument useless you are perfectly willing to pretend it isn't valid.