The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[Nishant Xavier]

No one, for future reference, if you want a response from me, try not to use silly insults and expletives in the same post. And also formulate some kind of argument like Angrboda did. To the implication of what you claimed, it is false; God has always revealed Himself to humanity in various ways since man began to exist; not least through Conscience, which we're going to discuss below, through the design in the Universe, through the very principle of contingency we're discussing etc. Unless you want to claim there was a time when man didn't have a Conscience, your argument fails.

@Angrboda

"An argument not given need not be refuted. If you're depending upon another result, you need to introduce it.

Ok, then. Since you asked. Let's deduce Property III of the First Cause:

Property III of the First Cause: The First Cause is a Supremely Good Personal Being, the origin of the objective Moral Law we discern on our Conscience.

Proof of Property III: There are 3 lines of evidence (1) from moral intuition (2) from the absurdity of subjective morality (3) from the inability of Moral Philosophers who are Moral Subjectivists to consistently maintain the requirements of subjective morality (as I mentioned in the case of Michael Ruse on the other thread, who in 1 place claims they are subjective, yet in another says, they are as certain as objective and necessarily true mathematical facts, something like: "the person who says murder and rape are fine is as wrong as one who says 2+2=5")

First, from basic and nearly universal human moral intuition. Virtually, every one holds to some properly basic moral Truths (even those who don't see that a Necessary First Cause of Goodness is entailed by those Truths) that are objectively binding on all, for e.g. that murder, rape, theft are wrong, or that we are (objectively) bound to care for the Poor, for the hungry, etc, which is correct; that comes from the Image of God in Man, and Woman, and is part of what the Bible, and St. Paul, and St. Augustine and St. Thomas call the Moral Law of Nature implanted within us.

Now, I agree that if you deny this moral fact, that moral Truths are objective, and hold to subjective morality, you can avoid the conclusion. The problem is nearly no one wants to hold rape or murder are subjective in the way that a choice of tea or coffee are. SM leads to gross absurdities.

If you want to be a Subjective Moralist, go for it. But have the intellectual (and moral) courage to follow through from your false premises to their grotesque conclusions. The true conclusion that would follow from subjective morality is that all law is impossible and nothing universally binding.

I will leave it at that for now as the question of whether Morality is Objective or Subjective (which does in fact have to be determined either from moral intuition; or from accepted moral Truths admitted by both sides) is not the immediate issue at hand here. 

Let's come to your question/objection, could the Moral Law have originated from some subordinate law-giver, and not the First Cause? In other words, is the First Cause of all being, the First Cause of all Goodness also, and was it He, or allegedly someone else, who implanted within us the moral obligation/objective moral Law we discern on our Conscience?

It's an interesting question and I'm just considering it for the first time. I would formulate my response like this: 
(1) moral Truths are necessary truths, not contingent truths. 

in modal logic, a necessary truth is one that is true in every possible world, for e.g. the laws of mathematics and logic.
a contingent truth or a possible truth is one that is true only in some p. worlds, for e.g. the laws of physics and science.

Moral Truths would come under the former category, unless one wants to argue one could be obliged to rape, murder, etc in some possible world, or that we are not bound to help the Poor, to feed the hungry etc could be possibly true.

(2) necessary Truths like moral laws binding in every possible world could not have originated from a contingent being.

(3) Therefore, they originated from the same necessarily existent First Cause, not some contingently existent intermediate being.

Since you asked me to formulate an argument, I did so briefly. Do share your thoughts. Will get back to the rest subsequently.

God Bless,
N. Xavier.

[Silver]

Here's an argument for you:

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[Nay_Sayer]

Here's an argument for you:

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So I did a little digging.

https://www.cathinfo.com/catholic-living...rs-ago/30/

He got kicked off a catholic forum for basically trolling then made a sock account.

The M.O is the same here.  Him against everyone in a thread then he starts a new one, lather, rinse, repeat.

Tsk Tsk Xaiver.

FSM weaps

[Fake Messiah]

No one, for future reference, if you want a response from me, try not to use silly insults and expletives in the same post.

All you do is talk to yourself by copy-pasting this nonsense.

First, from basic and nearly universal human moral intuition. Virtually, every one holds to some properly basic moral Truths (even those who don't see that a Necessary First Cause of Goodness is entailed by those Truths) that are objectively binding on all, for e.g. that murder, rape, theft are wrong

And yet murder, rape, theft are all condoned in the Bible by your god and also encouraged. Go figure.

[The Grand Nudger]

You tell others that if they wish to be moral subjectivists then they can go right ahead, and ofc they can - just as you have, positing that the morality maker is gods image and/or natural law. These are both explicitly subjective foundations. Compounding this error, you misunderstand moral objectivity which is explicitly.... contingent. A moral statement is true insomuch as it purports to report a fact and accurately does report that fact.

If you tell us why you think that rape or murder or apathy are wrong - we can likely imagine some possible world in which that explication will not hold. If, and only if... some set of specific facts are true in this world about rape, or murder..or apathy...not gods face™ or nature's law™, can we say that these things are objectively wrong.

What you've told us, instead, is that you believe some subjective moral law holds across all possible worlds. And also that you think moral subjectivism is absurd and probably evil. Good luck with all of that.

[Fake Messiah]

St. Augustine and St. Thomas call the Moral Law of Nature implanted within us.

Especially when they concluded that heretics should be tortured and killed. In other words, listening to Augustine and Aquinas talk about morality is no different than listening Hitler talk about morality.

[The Grand Nudger]

I guess I'm a glutton, but I'll listen to pretty much anyone talk about morality. The morality of fucking psychopaths, like those two catholic demigods, is more interesting to me personally than my own or that of anyone else here. My only pet peeve is in people just balls to the wall fucking up the terms. With moralizing theists, I feel it's an issue of wanting to argue over the name "objective morality" without feeling constrained by the actual criteria of any objective morality. Likely because they've been groomed by some child molester or their accomplices to believe that this is the "good morality" - so whatever they think must be this and whatever the godless heathens think must be other-than.

Obviously, it's fine if they think morality really is subject to the whims or nature of gods, godlings, or the mating habits of horny toads.....that things really are that way. All I ask is a little truth in advertising, lol.

[Deesse23]

Here's an argument for you:

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So I did a little digging.

https://www.cathinfo.com/catholic-living...rs-ago/30/

He got kicked off a catholic forum for basically trolling then made a sock account.

The M.O is the same here.  Him against everyone in a thread then he starts a new one, lather, rinse, repeat.

Tsk Tsk Xaiver.

FSM weaps

He was calling a member there "wicked woman". I wonder if he also had called someone "wicked man", but i doubt it.

[Belacqua]

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Yes, it's a persistent language problem. I also think that a lot of Christians should be more careful about this. 

Our thinking is structured largely by the language we use. Unfortunately English concepts often don't map well onto Aristotelian or Thomist ones. So there is always a danger of confusion concerning "a being" or "an entity," as well as, as I mentioned, "cause." 

(For example, Japanese has different nouns for a tangible thing and an intangible thing. So from the start it's generally clear what kind of "thing" we're talking about -- in some cases it's clearer than English. There is also a rich vocabulary for philosophy in this vein, addressing materiality and ideality. All this is inherited from Buddhist thought.)

It's the sort of thing that people can work out. When both sides are friendly and open-minded, we can ask for clearer definitions and make things clearer. I understand that's not a very common state for conversations.

[...]

Yes, the argument in the OP is far from complete or persuasive as it stands. It is one part of a systematic theology. 

For example all of the Five Ways hold that infinite regress is impossible, but don't explain that within the argument itself. That's why I always say that none of them is a self-contained argument, but more like a syllabus for a semester-long college class. Each step of the argument has prerequisites. Of course Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas have elaborate arguments as to why infinite regress isn't possible. 

So again, in a friendly conversation we can certainly ask "wait a minute, why isn't infinite regress possible?" and then ideally that could be explained also -- and rebutted and discussed. 

And as I said before, none of the Five Ways addresses why a First Cause is "his particular godling." That calls for several further arguments.

As you say, it needs a big boat. 

I don't know if the OP is willing to go to those lengths, or if he's aware of the prerequisites we'd need to find his argument sensible. Often I try to discuss these things with people and they seem unwilling to have a conversation.

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None of this addresses the fact that at its root the argument requires special pleading.

~ Everything that comes to be and passes away is contingent.
~ The causal chain of contingent things cannot be an infinite regress (for reasons explained elsewhere).
~ Therefore there needs to be one non-contingent thing at the origin of the chain of contingent things.

Which part of this is special pleading?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Repeating his flawed arguments doesn't make them less flawed.